Snapdeal beefs up logistics play to tackle festival rush, all deliveries within 24 hrs

New Delhi: Logistics seem to be the key to loyal customers and etailers are taking deliveries of orders rather seriously this Diwali. Last year, deep discounts had ensured unprecedented customer rush at etail giants’ websites.

Not only did many etailers face tech glitches due to exponential growth in traffic volume, some also faced the wrath of thousands of customers at the end of the sale period. Customers complained of delayed deliveries and sometimes even damaged goods. Returns and refunds besides lost reputation plagued these etail giants for months afterwards.

No wonder then that this time around, etailers are taking particular care of logistics. Take Snapdeal for example. It claims to have created 1.3 million square feet of warehouse space earlier in the year to prepare for the Diwali rush and this will anyway be doubled by year end. It says 70,000 units of large-sized products like furniture, beds, sofas have been shipped out over the last three days (till noon yesterday). Anticipating the surge in demand, 50 percent of products in these categories were pre-packed and kept ready for shipping! Packaging material like crates were pre-ordered and kept ready too.

Then, Snapdeal entered into a strategic partnership with last mile logistics company GoJavas in March this year by picking up a small stake. Earlier this month, just ahead of the sale period, it made another investment of $120 million with media reports suggesting it now owns close to 40 percent stake in the logistics firm.

A company spokesperson said that in under six months, GoJavas has become one of the highest performing last mile logistics partners for Snapdeal. Its average timeline for delivery of Snapdeal orders has reduced by 24 hours. Now, GoJavas reaches 150 more cities and currently delivers to 350 cities.

A good 98.6% of sales orders during this week’s sale have been delivered on time; each and every order is being shipped within 24 hours across any product category. The GoJavas partnership has also enabed four-hour delivery service for Snapdeal exclusive launches and returns by customers to be picked up within 90 minutes in 50 cities.

etailers usually use a mix of in-house logistics partners and express logistics firms to complete deliveries. Blue Dart’s MD Anil Khanna said earlier today that last mile logistics for etailers becomes quite tough during the Diwali sales rush which lead Blue Dart to open a ‘Parcel Locker’ in Gurgaon. He said customers can come down to these lockers to pick up packets instead of the courier boys struggling with door-step deliveries.

Khanna also said that while Flipkart is reducing dependence on its in-house logistics firm eKart, Snapdeal seems to be relying more on GoJavas for efficient deliveries. Flipkart, he said, is committed to reducing deliveries through eKart from 85 percent last fiscal to 65 percent this fiscal and further to 50 percent by 2016-17.

On its part, Flipkart has also been innovating to tackle the logistics headache. Some months back, it had launched ‘experience zones’ across the country to enable consumers to pick up products instead of shipments reaching their doorsteps. This facility ensures spot trials and instant returns besides payment in cash. Senior Director, Delivery Operations at Flipkart, Neeraj Aggarwal, had then said Flipkart planned to set up 100 such experience zones by March 2016.

It had initially set up experience zones across Bangalore, Mysore, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Pune, Vellore, Gurgaon, Vadodora and Surat.