Starting from midnight earlier today, e-commerce platforms in India have started accepting orders for non-essential items including mobile phones and accessories though there is a catch in the program.
For now, the federal government has permitted deliveries of non-essential items only in green and orange zones, which effectively rules out the major metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad - often considered a hotbed of demand for smartphone and accessories.
Does this mean the e-commerce players would miss out? Not so, says Amazon India while welcoming the latest decision announced by the Ministry of Home Affairs, which, it believes, would allow millions of small and medium businesses to jumpstart their businesses and livelihoods across the workforce.
Starting today, the e-commerce platforms are accepting products, with smartphones being available for pre-booking for all customers. However, in the case of those living in red zones, the bookings would appear as "not delivered" for now. The full list of red zones across India can be accessed here.
All States are accordingly requested to delineate the containment zones and buffer zones in the identified red and orange zone districts and notify the same: Union Health Secretary Preeti Sudan pic.twitter.com/Vz3f4xbs6hMay 1, 2020
In parallel, Amazon and Flipkart would be leasing more than 3 million square feet of additional warehousing space across major consumption centres. While Amazon has reportedly contracted 2 million square feet across Bengaluru and Flipkart has focused on Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad and Coimbatore, a news report says.
These facilities would start functioning before the year end as both Amazon and the Walmart-owned Flipkart seek to expand their footprint into the smaller towns. Both companies have reportedly picked up the additional space for ten years.
Meanwhile, both companies announced that they would be taking additional safety measures while delivering products in the third phase of the lockdown. Contact-less delivery would be the norm wherein customers would have the option to ask the delivery agents to leave the order outside the door.
The latest guidelines, which have been actioned till May 17, provide essentials only to those in the red zones and both essentials and non-essentials to those in the orange and green zones.
“We welcome the Government’s efforts in progressively charting out an exit plan from the lockdown and allowing e-commerce to serve consumers in the Orange and Green zones by fulfilling their products needs, in addition to serving essentials/ grocery in Red zone through a safe supply chain and SOPs,” Flipkart said in a statement.
