Amazon Adds 3 New Fulfillment Centres Ahead Of The Start Of Festive Season Sale

Ahead of the upcoming festive season, Amazon India has launched three new fulfillment centres in Delhi NCR, Guwahati and Patna to support over 2.5 Lakh sellers in the region. 

The new fulfillment centres will have a combined storage space of 1.2 Mn cubic feet to enable sellers in the region to better cater to customer needs while generating thousands of job opportunities.

Amazon will kick off its annual festival season sales, the Great Indian Festival sale, from September 26, the same day as its rival Flipkart. Meanwhile, Meesho will start its festive season sale on September 27.

Commenting on the new fullfilment centres, Amazon India vice president of operations Abhinav Singh said, “… we have added three new fulfilment centres to our existing pan-India operations network that consists of over 43 Mn cubic feet of storage space, sort centres in 19 states, about 2,000 delivery stations, Amazon Air, our partnerships with Indian Railways, India Post and much more.” 

Meanwhile, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “I hope that with this capacity building, Amazon will now be better equipped to benefit millions of local retailers, which in turn will contribute to the Indian economy.”

It is pertinent to note that Amazon India recently said it has created more than 1.1 Lakh seasonal “job opportunities” in the country across its operations network to meet the growing customer demand during the upcoming festive season. 

Notably, a survey by workers’ collectives UNI Global Union recently highlighted that Amazon India warehouse and delivery workers are working in ‘unsafe conditions’ while struggling with insufficient pay. 

On the other hand, the tug-of-war between Amazon and the Competition Commission of India (CCI) continues. Recently, the CCI, in an internal report, found the company, along with Flipkart, guilty of violating competition laws by giving preference to select sellers on its platform. The CCI claimed that preferred sellers on Amazon received an advantage in the online listing and that customer’s attention was drawn towards such listing when searched for any product.

The ecommerce giant is also exploring the possibility of separating Amazon Pay from the main app and launching a standalone app for its payment services.  

Meanwhile, Amazon is now looking to launch its quick commerce services in India in the first quarter of next year. Its rival Flipkart launched Flipkart Minutes in select cities recently.  

Last year, Amazon India said over 38,000 sellers achieved their highest-ever single day sales during its Great Indian Festival sale. The ecommerce platforms together clocked a gross merchandise value (GMV) of about INR 47,000 Cr, which grew 19% year-on-year (YoY), just in the first week of the 2023 festive season sale.