Flipkart to introduce same-day delivery for ecommerce orders in February
Flipkart’s same-day delivery feature is aimed at taking on rival Amazon’s proposition which is available for select products for Prime customers.
Ecommerce company Flipkart has rolled out a same-day delivery option for multiple product categories across 20 cities including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Patna, and Vijayawada, among others.
Starting in February, customers can get their orders delivered before midnight if they place the order by 1 pm, the firm said in a statement on Wednesday. The feature will be scaled to other cities over the next few months.
Eligible product categories include mobiles, fashion, beauty products, lifestyle, books, home appliances, and electronics.
Flipkart’s move will put it in competition with rival Amazon’s same-day delivery feature which is available to Prime customers. Over the years, the US tech giant’s India arm has pinned hopes on same-day delivery to drive Prime Day sales, a top executive told YourStory in July last year.
“From Prime Day 2022 to now, we have continued to focus on our same-day delivery programme and expanded our coverage to 21 more cities versus 2022," Abhinav Singh, Vice President of Customer Fulfilment, Supply Chain and Amazon Transportation Services at Amazon India, had said.
To enable same-day delivery, said it has invested in setting up multiple fulfilment centres along with expanding technology capabilities for better sortation and more throughput.
It has also deployed machine learning models to foster meticulous route planning, optimising delivery routes, lesser pick-up times from aisles, and faster sortation of products, it added.
“Considering that customers not just from metro cities but non-metros cities love to shop on Flipkart, we are working to provide the same day delivery to 20 cities, reinforcing our commitment to staying at the forefront of customer satisfaction," Hemant Badri, Senior Vice President and Head of Supply Chain, Customer Experience and ReCommerce Business at Flipkart Group, said.
"We will further scale it in the months to come, to include more cities and more categories including large appliances, to delight the customers,” he added.
The Walmart-owned company aims to streamline its supply chain network to seamlessly process millions of orders each day, with equal delivery efficiency in the metro and non-metro cities, Badri added.
Edited by Affirunisa Kankudti