Homegrown e-commerce marketplace Flipkart said on May 11 that it plans to enhance its supply chain infrastructure and expand its fulfilment centre capacity for grocery by more than 8 lakh sq ft over the next three months across Delhi, Kolkata and other cities.
The additional fulfilment centre capacity will help Flipkart cater to over 73,000 grocery orders per day, the company said in a statement.
With this additional infrastructure, the marketplace will bring the ease of online grocery shopping to more users across the country, it said.
Flipkart Grocery offers over 7,000 products across more than 200 categories - ranging from daily household supplies, staples, snacks & beverages, confectionery, personal care, and much more.
With the current grocery fulfilment centre network spread across Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad, among other cities, Flipkart serves close to 64,000 orders a day, it said.
“During these challenging times, e-commerce has emerged as a safe means of making purchases. Customer safety is at the centre of the Flipkart group’s efforts and our new grocery supply chain infrastructure will help us serve more customers in the country who can order daily essentials seamlessly and avail of contactless delivery. We are also continuously engaging with brand and marketplace partners to ensure stock availability across the country,” said Smrithi Ravichandran, Vice President - Grocery, Flipkart.
Last month, Flipkart expanded its hyperlocal service Flipkart Quick to six new cities - Delhi, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Noida, Hyderabad and Pune - to provide consumers access to order daily essentials such as fruits and vegetables and get delivery within 90 minutes.
A report by global consultant JLL has said that despite unfavourable socio-economic environment, warehousing stock in top 8 cities has added 27 million sq. ft to reach a total of 238 million sq. ft. in 2020 and demand is expected to grow around 160% to reach 35 million sq. ft in 2021 provided external conditions stay stable.
This is supported by growing demand in sectors such as 3PL (Third Party Logistics) and e-commerce. 3PL has become one of the fastest growing segments in the warehousing space, contributing nearly 35% of total net absorption in 2020, highest among all the other sectors. Likewise, many e-commerce categories are expected to do very well, as consumers are making a behavioral shift from buying offline to online, said the report titled India Real Estate Outlook – A new growth cycle by JLL.