Festive season an opportunity to create value chain for stakeholders, seasonal jobs: Flipkart

e-commerce major Flipkart is readying to hold its big billion days sale during October 7-12. To make this mega sales event a success, the company is streamlining its supply chain, manpower and logistical processes apart from building up additional capacity. In an exclusive conversation with Bizz Buzz, Rajneesh Kumar, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Flipkart, said the etailer has added 66 new large-scale fulfillment and sortation centers across the country along with more than 1,000 new delivery hubs. Flipkart is also creating 1,15,000 seasonal jobs for the upcoming festive season taking into account the demand outlook. The Walmart-owned firm is also strengthening its seller base and is on-track to add 1.2 lakh new sellers to its platform by December 2021

How is Flipkart preparing for the upcoming festive season in terms of supply chain, manpower and logistics management?

As the country's home-grown e-commerce marketplace, we feel the festive season is an opportunity to create value for all stakeholders including sellers, customers, kiranas and ecosystem partners. To enable this, we have significantly expanded our supply chain across the country and have opened several large and small warehouses across various states including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana and Gujarat. This will generate thousands of full-time and seasonal job opportunities such as sorter, picker, packer and delivery executives, helping bring customer delight through timely and safe delivery of millions of shipments across the country.

Flipkart has launched 'Flipkart Xtra' in order to hire a temporary workforce. Can you elaborate how this new platform will work? How many temporary workers are likely to be absorbed during this festive season by Flipkart?

We have introduced a service marketplace 'Flipkart Xtra' to offer flexible part-time job opportunities where individuals can earn additional income by working as delivery partners for Flipkart. While this will ensure fast deliveries for customers, it will also create about 4,000 jobs this festive season. We have introduced this as an app on the playstore and in a few simple steps, interested individuals can onboard themselves and post a background verification. They can choose the job role they want to partner for, including the role of delivery executive, service partner or technicians. We have been increasing direct job creation during festive time year-on-year - 50,000 jobs in 2019, 70,000 jobs in 2020 - and we expect to continue the impact creation this festive season as well. Flipkart has created 1,15,000 seasonal jobs for the upcoming festive season across its supply chain, with a 15 per cent diversity hiring, including women and employees with disabilities. The addition of 66 new fulfilment and sortation centers across the country in the states of Assam, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and West Bengal have helped create these job opportunities across the supply chain.

Our Kirana Delivery Programme has seen consistent growth in the past three years and today accounts for nearly one-third of Flipkart's deliveries made in a month. This festive season, we have onboarded 1,00,000 Kirana partners for delivery across regions including Khammam (Telangana), Bareilly (Uttar Pradesh) and Junagarh (Odisha), double from last year.

How are the new segments like e-grocery doing now?

The pandemic has contributed to slow and steady movement to online shopping for meeting the basic necessities and grocery, thereby, has witnessed the largest uptick in demand across the country. The massive wave of digitisation has enabled deeper penetrations and wider adoptions in tier 2+ cities and this evolving landscape of grocery business will continue to grow. Ahead of the festive season, Flipkart has expanded its hyper local service Flipkart Quick to three new metros - Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai - to provide consumers safe and seamless access to order daily essentials through quick doorstep delivery. Flipkart Quick will now be available across ten cities, including Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Hyderabad, Noida, and Pune. Flipkart plans to introduce this hyper local service to other cities in a phased manner this year and aims to be present in over 200 cities by the end of 2022. By the end of September 2021, Flipkart Quick will also service consumers in Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula, taking the total city count to 14 cities.

The pandemic has brought in change in consumer behaviour with people in the hinterland of India embracing digital platforms for purchasing products. How many new pin codes have been added by Flipkart in the last one year? How is the overall reach of Flipkart distribution in rural areas?

In the wake of the pandemic, e-commerce played a vital role in supporting the demand and supply framework by making both essentials and non-essentials available for stay-at-home consumers. From Indo-Pak border in Gujarat, deserts of Rann of Kutch to 5,000 feet above sea level in Siliguri, Flipkart's supply chain has been delivering shipments across 100 per cent serviceable pin codes.

In view of the upcoming festive season and The Big Billion Days, Flipkart has also strengthened and expanded its supply chain across the country. To cater to the growing needs of millions of consumers coming online and to support market access for lakhs of MSMEs, sellers, artisans, and kiranas. Towards this effort, Flipkart has added 66 new large-scale fulfillment and sortation centers across the country in the states of Assam, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and West Bengal. In addition to this, Flipkart has also strengthened its last-mile reach with the addition of more than 1,000 new delivery hubs across the country.

How many sellers have been added in the last one year? What are the kinds of benefits extended to the sellers by Flipkart?

Since the pandemic, the Flipkart marketplace has seen an encouraging response from MSMEs who want to take their business online with e-commerce. During these unprecedented times, e-commerce has connected MSMEs across the entire value chain and thereby ensured business continuity, growth and liquidity for small businesses. Flipkart continues to strengthen its seller base and is on-track to add 1.2 lakh new sellers to its platform by December 2021. Flipkart has already onboarded around 75,000 sellers on its platform over the last few months as MSMEs and small business entrepreneurs continue to be enthused by the potential of ecommerce ahead of the festive season.

Currently, the Flipkart Marketplace supports digital commerce for 3.75 lakh sellers and is steadily working towards taking this number to 4.2 lakh sellers on its platform by the year end. The new sellers and MSME base predominantly come from tier-2 and 3 markets such as Agra, Indore, Jaipur, Panipat, Rajkot, Surat, and many others. To support the business continuity and growth of these sellers during the festive season, Flipkart has enabled a next-day payment programme that allows sellers to receive their order payments within a day. Further, as part of the company's Growth Capital seller financing programme, Flipkart is offering sellers customized offerings from its lenders based on projected growth.