E-commerce player Flipkart today announced that its supply chain arm, eKart logistics, will now offer its end-to-end supply chain solutions (including logistics and warehousing) to other brands, platforms and small and large businesses across the country. With its externalisation, eKart will also provide dropship, inventory management, distribution, aggregation.
Further, through Jeeves - the services arm of Flipkart, it will provide end-to-end solutions (including installation, demo & repair services) for the after-sales needs of brands.
eKart, the company said in a statement, has a growing network of Fulfillment Centers, Mother Hubs or sortation centers, and thousands of delivery hubs across the country, currently delivering close to 100 million shipments a month. It possesses cross-belt sorters, robotic arms and automated guided vehicles to automatically sort shipments based on the pincodes.
Flipkart hopes to scale up its logistic business
This is not the first time that Flipkart is trying to open up eKart for delivering things for other companies. In 2017, Flipkart opened up eKart for third parties. It had clients like Tata CLIQ, Voonik and Adidas. But it kind of closed it as not much headway was made through it. Now, Flipkart is taking another stab at it as it believes its in-house logistics business has really grown big.
Flipkart said the suite of services provided by eKart across Cash on Delivery, QR based payment, Open Box delivery, Tech-visit and re-inventorization, will help serve brands, platforms and small and large businesses with all their fulfillment needs.
Hemant Badri, Senior Vice President, eKart, said, "We are delighted to bring our deep expertise and capabilities to the small, medium and large businesses seeking to reach customers and clients across the country through our tech-driven dependable supply chain."
eKart, the company said, employs more than 200,000 people directly or indirectly, across its operations. eKart has also assured a 100% transition to electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030., In addition, the repair and refurbishment operations of Jeeves help eliminate electronic waste from the ecosystem.
India’s last-mile-delivery ecosystem comprises FMCG, ecommerce, retail and other players. Of these, FMCG constitutes the highest followed by ecommerce. The overall e-commerce shipments has grown from 817 million shipments in 2018 to 1,364 million shipments in 2020, and is expected to grow over 5,000 million shipments by 2025.
