Ecommerce biggies Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm & Shopclues pulling out all the stops for hassle-free festive season sales

With just one month to go for Diwali, all etailers are busy going through their festive seasonchecklist before the D-day(s) arrives. This is to ensure that maximum revenue is generated with minimum hiccups. Logistics & delivery is going to be the biggest game changer at the end of the sale season and therefore needless to say, the focus is primarily on last-mile delivery.

Flipkart invests in technology, logistics and increasing seller base to meet Big Billion Sale demand

Last year’s Big Billion Day earned a lot of moolah for Flipkart but also earned some brickbatsas the logistics & delivery process collapsed. So the etailer is doing its best that Big Billion Sale this time runs smooth.

For the same the company is expanding their delivery team, adding warehouses, ramping up technology and chalking out foolproof logistics system.

Flipkart’s Chief Business Officer revealed, “We are ramping up our logistics and during the festive season we will have over 19,000 delivery boys, including those from Ekart, delivering to over 40,000 pin codes across India.”

Few days back, the company had also launched a new program, ‘Turbo Charge’, to attract new sellers to meet the festive season demand.

Shopclues, Snapdeal, Paytm to focus on last-mile delivery

In order to prepare for the busy times ahead, most of the big ecommerce players are going to allow merchants to ship directly to customers, whenever possible.

CMO of Shopclues, Radhika Aggarwal stated, “Close to 4% of our orders are fulfilled directly by merchants to customers. This is especially relevant in case of products which require installation services, such as appliances.”

The etailers are also temporarily tying up with multiple hyperlocal and regional logistic partners. Shopclues who is targeting sales of 1,600 crore this festive season, had disclosed a few weeks back its plan to tap into its hyper-local model to satisfy the expected rise in orders during this period.

Ashish Chitravanshi, VP – Operations at Snapdeal confirmed, “We have tied up with around 12 regional logistics partners who are delivering products across categories including fashion, electronics, appliances, furniture and other home categories. Some of these partners are hyperlocal-specific partners, fulfilling the orders directly from seller to the user.”

Paytm has also joined hands with 30 national & regional courier companies. “We are working with merchants to tap into their logistics network for effective last-mile delivery,said Saurabh Vashishtha, VP- Business at Paytm. Earlier last month, the company had announced its plans to invest Rs 500 crore to prepare for Diwali rush.

Golden opportunity for sellers and logistic companies

This festive rush is proving to be an excellent opportunity for small logistic players and sellers as ecommerce companies are trying hard to iron out order-fulfillment and last-mile delivery issues. Job opportunities are being created too as staff crunch is one of the issues etailers face during peak season.

Here’s hoping that the upcoming sale season turns out to be profitable for all, be it etailers, sellers, workforce, logistic players and customers.