Snapdeal expands logistics network ahead of festive season, adds 8 hubs

Ecommerce major Snapdeal added eight logistics centres to its network across manufacturing hubs, including Mathura, Noida, and Mumbai, ahead of the festive season.

The expansion is part of a decentralised network designed by Snapdeal, where its centres are located within commercial hubs inside a city to ensure faster pickup of packets from the sellers, a statement said.

"This has become all the more important due to COVID-19 related restrictions, which at times reduce the operating hours or prohibit weekend operations in some parts of the country. The new centres are located inside the manufacturing hubs at Bahadurgarh, Yamuna Nagar (Haryana), Rajkot (Gujarat), Bhiwandi (Maharashtra), Agra, Noida, Mathura (Uttar Pradesh) and Mumbai," it added.

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Snapdeal said the new centres are part of a pre-Diwali increase in capacity to cater to the festive spike in volumes.

The company did not disclose details around investment made towards the expansion.

"These new centres will cater to manufacturers and sellers of decor and furnishing items like lights, curtains, bedsheets, kitchenware and apparel, including sarees and ethnic wear. All these items are expected to witness high festive sales volumes due to an increase in the number of Indians preferring to buy online for convenience and safety reasons," the statement said.

Earlier this year, Snapdeal had opened 15 logistics centres. With the new addition, the company now runs 23 logistics centres.

Snapdeal's logistics hubs offer dedicated facilities for the manufacturing units, including packaging of orders and online tracking for orders in transit and facilitate faster movement of packets.

"The additional logistics capacity comes ahead of the festive season sale when the volume of orders is higher. The new centres make the fulfilment process simpler for the manufacturer-sellers so that they can devote all their resources towards production," a Snapdeal spokesperson said.

The new centres cater to the growing shipment volumes from manufacturers who are opting to sell directly on Snapdeal, bypassing or supplementing the traditional structure of selling through wholesalers and retailers, the company said.

It added that there has been a steady increase in sellers on Snapdeal who manufacture their own products. Snapdeal aims to add 5,000 manufacturer-sellers on its platform this year.

Most of these manufacturers produce and sell daily use products like steel and copper utensils, kitchen gadgets such as food processors, and fashion accessories. The online marketplace has more than five lakh registered sellers with over 220 million product listings.

Snapdeal, which competes with players like Amazon and Flipkart, said 75,000 sellers joined the platform in the last 18 months, with nearly 10,000 during the pandemic period. About 85 percent of Snapdeal's users are from non-metro cities.