Snapdeal pushes sellers on to fulfillment centres as it targets 4-hour deliveries

New Delhi: As e-commerce businesses scale new heights in India, there is more emphasis in getting the last mile logistics right. To this end, Snapdeal has already embarked on a mission. It wants to now get more and more sellers on its platform to stock products with its fulfillment centres as it prepares to start time-definite deliveries. Co-founder Rohit Bansal said earlier this month that Snapdeal will soon begin 4-hour deliveries across 10 cities. Competitors like Amazon and Flipkart already offer same day deliveries whereas Snapdeal currently offers next day deliveries. So why this push to direct sellers to fulfillment centres? Ashish Chitravanshi, VP Operations at Snapdeal, says at these centres sellers can stock inventory so that when an order arrives, courier partners can rush to these centres to pick up packages instead of going to the merchants individually. “In time definite deliveries, sometimes every minute counts. All parts of the chain must work in tandem,” Chitravanshi says. This model was codenamed ‘Snapdeal Plus’ and has been in existence for a year. [caption id=“attachment_2116071” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Snapdeal co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl. Image courtesy Snapdeal[/caption]Under ‘Snapdeal Plus’, 50 fulfillment centres across 20 cities already offer services to sellers. This spread will widen, as Snapdeal is targeting 75 such centres across 30 cities this year. These fulfillment centres provide a single window service to sellers. They are maintained by partners (not by Snapdeal itself) and sellers stocking goods at these centres are charged a small fee for the service. Chitravanshi says Snapdeal owns no inventory and this model helps the company remain true to its philosophy of an “asset light” model. Recently, Snapdeal became the first e-commerce giant in India to pick up a small stake in a logistics company Go Javas, in its continued efforts to strengthen logistics and last mile delivery dynamics. Bansal had said earlier that last Diwali, Snapdeal shipped 8 million packets a month across India and that number has increased in the recent months. It has a lakh sellers using the Snapdeal platform now and has already announced a target of getting a million sellers over the next three years. The company says it can service almost any pin code in India. Chitravanshi claims Snapdeal reaches all 28 pincodes in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 1200 pin codes in the North East and that more than a two in three orders on Snapdeal come from Tier II and Tier III towns. It has ensured deliveries to India’s remote locations in some interesting ways. For example, Snapdeal entered into a partnership with Fino Paytech last year to cover semi-urban and rural areas and buyers who do not have a permanent residential address to get order deliveries. At that time, Snapdeal had spoken of a plan to set up assisted outlets across 65 cities and over 70,000 rural areas. Some of the locations where this service was launched include Dharavi (Asia’s Largest Slum), Varanasi, Valsad (Gujarat) Urban Villages of Noida, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Jaipur. Fino Paytech is a payments solutions company. So Snapdeal agents sit at Fino Paytech outlets, note down orders and then get deliveries for customers at the Fino Paytech outlets. From here, customers then pick up orders to take home.