Amazon invests in West Bengal's largest e-commerce fulfilment centre

 
Kolkata: World’s largest e-commerce giant Amazon on Thursday launched its fifth and largest fulfilment centre in West Bengal at Kolkata which will double its storage capacity in the state ahead of the crucial festival sales which will start from September 29.

With this infrastructure, the Amazon.in marketplace will now have storage capacity of more than two million cubic feet spread across five fulfilment centres in the state, the company said in a release. The marketplace has close to 20,000 sellers in West Bengal.

The new fulfilment centre in Kolkata has more than 7.5 lakh cubic feet of storage space and will enable faster deliveries of customer orders within the region and neighbouring states.

Amazon India vice president (customer fulfilment) Akhil Saxena said apart from the new fulfilment centre in the state, the company has also expanded its transportation network, while doubling the capacity of delivery network such as sortation centre.

“Amazon now has 85 delivery stations and service centres in West Bengal which will be like 1.5 times expansion over the last year. With this capability, we can now directly deliver to towns like Purulia, Dinajpur and Kalimpong either the next day or in two days,” said Saxena.

Amazon said the new infrastructure will enable it to serve customers better and will further small and medium businesses in the region to fulfil their customer orders seamlessly.

“Our deep investment in the state will also create thousands of opportunities for employment. We have received business friendly eco-system and support from the West Bengal government,” said Saxena.

The fulfilment centres in West Bengal will cater to categories such as smartphones, consumer electronics, appliances, fashion and FMCG.

By end of calendar 2019, Amazon will have more than 50 fulfilment centres in 13 states with a combined storage space of more than 26 million cubic feet. The e-commerce marketplace offers over 20 crore products by more than 5 lakh sellers.

When using ‘Fulfilment By Amazon’ services, sellers across India send their products to Amazon’s fulfilment centres. Once an order is placed, Amazon picks, packs and ships the order to the customer, provides customer service support and manages returns on behalf of the sellers.