Flipkart Joins Same-Day Ecommerce Delivery Bandwagon To Take On Amazon

The same-day ecommerce delivery service which was kicked off by Amazon under its subscription model Prime in 2017 has lately seen renewed action with its rival Flipkart joining the bandwagon from Thursday (February 1).

Flipkart has rolled out the same-day delivery services for multiple products, including, mobiles, fashion, beauty products, lifestyle, books, home appliances and electronics, among others, across 20 cities. 

These cities include Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Coimbatore, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad and Indore, among others.

It is pertinent to mention here that the Walmart-backed company started its same-day delivery across 10 cities in 2014 but later brought down the curtain on its services. Back then, it was charging users a shipping fee of INR 200.

Under the new service, customers can get their orders delivered before midnight if they place the order by 1 PM, the firm said in a statement, adding that the feature will be scaled to other cities over the next few months.

Flipkart claims to have invested in multiple fulfilment centres, along with tech capabilities for better sorting of products, last year to enable same-day delivery. 

It took months of planning to ensure that orders would be fulfilled from the nearest fulfilment centre, minimising transit times and enhancing the overall efficiency of the delivery process, the statement added.

“Considering that customers not just from metro cities but non-metros cities love to shop on Flipkart, we are working to provide same-day delivery to 20 cities, reinforcing our commitment to staying at the forefront of customer satisfaction. We will further scale it in the months to come, to include more cities and more categories including large appliances, to delight the customers,” said Hemant Badri, SVP, group head of supply chain, customer experience and recommerce business at Flipkart Group. 

This comes days after Flipkart rolled out its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) offering to the first batch of users as another step towards strengthening its presence in the fintech sector.

Amid the business expansion, the company is also expected to lay off a few employees over the coming months.

As per a Moneycontrol report, the company is slashing around 1,000 jobs as part of its annual performance review process. Accordingly, the team size is expected to be cut by 5%. Earlier, another report said that the layoff would impact around 5-7% of the total workforce.

The company has around 22,000 employees on its payroll currently.

However, a source aware of the development told Inc42 that the layoff numbers are speculative. The company routinely conducts performance reviews and its result would only be known by the end of March-April, the source added.

In October last year, Flipkart unveiled “Flipkart VIP”, at a price point of INR 499 per annum, INR 500 less than Amazon Prime membership. Under the membership, the company provides free same-day/next-day deliveries for VIP members in selected areas. The company didn’t specify if one day delivery is exclusive only to VIP members.

It is pertinent to note with the increase in access to smartphones, UPI and the overall digital payments infrastructure have boomed in the country. Most recently, foodtech major Zomato and global digital payments startup Stripe’s Indian arm have also received the RBI’s nod to function as an online payment aggregator.

The company’s B2C arm, Flipkart Internet Private Limited spent INR 6,571.2 Cr on transportation expenses in FY23, an increase of 30% from INR 5,045.6 Cr in the previous fiscal year. Its operating revenue in the year stood at INR 14,845.8 Cr, up 42% from INR 10,477.4 Cr it raked in in FY22. The group’s chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy said the company nearing profitability on the back of a significant reduction in monthly cash burn.