Amazon India has invested in six new fulfillment centres (FC’s) to meet the demands of its seller base in the country. New FCs will be set up in Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai.
The company’s FCs currently cover a total area of close to 2.5 million square feet. It will now see a 1.5X growth in storage capacity which is 7.5 million cubic feet of space.
With this step, Amazon would be able to offer its Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) service to several thousand more small & medium businesses. This would further help them to gain access to and service customers across the country at significantly low operating costs.
At present over 1.3 Mn products are available for immediate shipping through the network of Amazon’s FCs in India. Amazon FCs are present across 10 states viz. Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal.
“Fulfilment Centres fulfil important needs of small and medium enterprises seeking markets and customers located all over India and lacking resources to create their captive distribution networks; local entrepreneurs seeking opportunities to provide goods and services; qualified and educated young workforce in remote and rural areas seeking employment and skill development,” said Akhil Saxena, Vice President, India Customer Fulfilment, Amazon India.
“Apart from these benefits, the FC will also enable faster and quicker delivery of products to consumers across the region” he added.
Over 80% of sellers on Amazon.in currently use its fulfilment services. When using Fulfilment By Amazon (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 and Sunday delivery.
Sellers save money by replacing their upfront capital expense with low variable cost and pay only for the storage space they use and the orders that Amazon fulfils. 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.
Since its launch in June 2013, Amazon.in has been working extensively to launch services that meet different business requirements of sellers and help them grow their business profitably online. This includes Seller University, Easy Ship, Seller Flex, and Amazon Tatkal
Amazon launched its Global Selling Program for sellers in India in May last year and today over 8,000 sellers from India are selling their ‘Make in India’ products on Amazon’s nine global marketplaces to over 300 million active worldwide customers.
Amazon is busy pouring in money in India recently. In June last month, it invested $200 Mn. Earlier in April 2016, in order to grab the largest share in the ecommerce marketplace in India, Amazon India almost doubled its authorised capital to $2.4 Bn (INR 16,000 Cr), exceeding its capital commitment of $2 Bn(about INR 13,000), that it committed in July 2014.
India’s e-commerce market is expected to grow to $103 Bn by 2020, as per a report by Goldman Sachs. And home-grown ecommerce biggies are all set to take advantage.
