Ahead of Prime Day, Amazon India expands its specialized network for large appliances, furniture

BENGALURU: Ahead of Prime Day (July 15 – 16), Amazon today announced the expansion of its network of specialized Fulfilment Centers (FC) and Delivery Stations for Large Appliances and Furniture. The company will launch specialized Fulfilment Centers in two new cities - Patna and Guwahati, and add more storage capacity to its existing specialized FCs in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ludhiana, and Ahmedabad among other cities. 

Amazon India will now have a network of specialized FCs with close to 9 million cubic feet of storage space, an increase of close to 40% from December 2018. Amazon also increased its specialized delivery network from 60 to over 80 delivery stations this year. Expansion of this specialized network will ensure faster deliveries to close to 14,000 pin codes, a 2x increase from 2018. Customers from over 60 cities can now receive next day deliveries in these categories.

Amazon.in has over 3500 products in the Large Appliances category consisting of air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines & TVs from leading brands such as LG, Samsung, Whirlpool, Bosch, IFB, Haier, Mi to name a few. Over 1.2 lakh products covering the entire Furniture range including products for bedroom, living room, dining room, kitchen, home office & hallway from brands such as, Home Centre, Sleepwell, Godrej Interio, @home, Durian and La-Z-Boy are listed on Amazon. 

On Prime Day 2019, members will have access to over 1,000 new product launches and thousands of deals on large appliances such as Alexa-enabled washing machine from IFB, washing machines by AmazonBasics, Eureka Forbes water purifier, Dyson’s handheld vacuum cleaner, among others.

Amazon offers customers a scheduled delivery and installation experience for large appliances in 240 cities and furniture in 89 cities in India. Amazon offers customers a scheduled delivery with over 80% of customers opting for this service. In addition customers can also avail installation services for large appliances in 200 cities and furniture in 60 cities in India. Currently nearly 60% of customers ordering large appliances opt to get their deliveries the next day or within 2 days. This infrastructure expansion will help customers get an even better experience as Prime Day approaches.

Akhil Saxena, Vice President, Customer Fulfilment - Asia, Amazon said in a statement, “We are happy to announce the expansion of our specialized network for large appliances and furniture as we consistently invest in our infrastructure and delivery network, to provide a superior experience to both – customers and sellers.”

Kaveesh Chawla, Director – Category Management, Amazon India said in a statement, “Our investments in infrastructure, installation services and sound finance options have led to changes in customer behavior and adoption of online shopping for Large appliances and Furniture. With this infrastructure addition we want to extend scheduled and next day delivery to more customers. We continue to be relentlessly focused on providing a superior experience for customers buying products in these categories.”

Meanwhile, Amazon has another programme- Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA). When using FBA, sellers across India send their products to Amazon’s FCs and once an order is placed, Amazon picks, packs, and ships the order to the customer, provides customer service and manages returns on behalf of the sellers. Orders fulfilled by Amazon are eligible for Cash on Delivery, Guaranteed Next-Day, Same Day, Release Day, Morning delivery and Sunday delivery. Sellers always have the flexibility to choose the number of products they want to have fulfilled by Amazon and scale according to their business requirements.