E-commerce major Amazon India has opened six new fulfilment centres across five cities, as it prepares for a spike in demand in the upcoming festival season said a report in Mint. Amazon’s fulfilment centres are essentially large warehouses, where sellers can send their products, which are packed, despatched and delivered to the customer by the company under its “Fulfilled By Amazon” service. The new centres are in Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai.
“We remain committed to investing in our fulfilment and logistics capability to enable and empower sellers to serve customers nationally at lower costs. It stands testament to our larger commitment of making deep investments in the country and in turn creating opportunities for employment, growth and revenue generation for the government,” Akhil Saxena, vice-president, India customer fulfilment at Amazon India, said in a statement. The move will allow Amazon to offer its “Fulfilled By Amazon” service to more small and medium businesses and enable faster delivery and easier returns.
Over 80% of sellers on Amazon.in currently use its fulfilment services, the statement said. The six new centres add to Amazon’s 21 existing fulfilment centres across Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal, covering a total area of close to 2.5 million square feet.
Last month, Amazon.com Inc. announced an additional investment of $3 billion in India after the company exhausted its investment of $2 billion made in July 2014.Currently, over 1.3 million products are available for immediate shipping through the network of Amazon’s fulfilment centres in India.
Amazon launched its India marketplace, Amazon Seller Services, in June 2013 and has quickly expanded its product selection to become the biggest rival to the two large local marketplaces Flipkart and Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd).
Among other initiatives, the US-based e-commerce firm, early this year, also started Amazon Tatkal, a service-on-wheels to help small and medium businesses get online within 60 minutes.It also runs a seller lending programme in India to help small and medium-sized businesses on Amazon.in get access to working capital.
