Same-day delivery: Did Flipkart's newly launched service steal Amazon's thunder?

There is no doubt about it: a fierce war is raging among India’s top e-retailers and they are scrambling to pamper consumers with seemingly unbelievable service guarantees. Flipkart, which claims to have reached gross sales value (GSV) of a billion dollars, the fastest among the pack, today launched same day delivery across 10 Indian cities for a small fee. Same day delivery is a big deal, since it guarantees an online customer the same experience that he or she would have got while shopping at a physical store. And since it is being offered across 10 cities, half of Flipkart’s existing customers can use the service.

Though Flipkart is not the first one to dangle the same-day delivery carrot to customers, it has offered this service across all product categories and in the largest geographical area. Amazon is running a pilot for same day delivery, but only in Mumbai. eBay says it has been offering a nine hour delivery guarantee, again in Mumbai, since January where if an order is placed by lunch, it is sure to be at your doorstep by dinnertime. Flipkart also offers next day delivery options in 27 cities.

So how’s Flipkart different? Like we said, it is offering such a service across 10 cities versus single-city pilot projects by others. The other big differentiator is a small charge that Flipkart has levied but others have not. Will others such as Amazon, Snapdeal, eBay also quickly follow Flipkart?

India’s top e-retailers such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon and eBay are fighting a pitched battle across several fronts. A recent story in The Economic Times referred to same-day delivery but in the context of sellers on these sites. The story said Amazon has allowed merchants to sell their wares on the same day they register with it. Apparently, the same process takes nearly two weeks on competing platforms. Amazon is in stiff competition with Flipkart, since it stocks more products than Flipkart though the GSV for Flipkart is higher.

Meanwhile, eBay has taken the battle to the competition in a completely different way: it has partnered with five crore small Indian merchants through CAIT (Confederation of All Indian Traders) to teach them online trading, help them export products etc. This way, eBay gets unparalelled access and revenue from small Indian merchants.

The ET story quoted earlier said Amazon, which is the world’s largest online retailer, is also expanding the range of products that will be delivered to customers within a day.

For this story, an Amazon India spokesperson merely said “We are running a pilot on same day delivery for our customers in Mumbai. This is a step further in our continual effort to deliver products to our customers fast and reliably. Depending on results, we will take a call on how and what we want to roll out and we will make further announcement on this at an appropriate time.”

It seems Amazon has already started roping in kirana stores in Bangalore to take care of last-mile delivery issues. From a company that is famously considering the use of drones to deliver goods at customers’ doorsteps in the US, novel delivery models should hardly be surprising.

Flipkart’s Senior VP Marketing Ravi Vora admits that the large scale singe day delivery promise will be an advantage for sometime only as competitors will eventually catch up. He also told Firstbiz that Flipkart has considered rivals’ models, such as roping in local kirana store for ensuring speedy deliveries. Will this model also be used alongside same day deliveries?

For now, Vora says the new same-day delivery model itself will be fine tuned. Every second Flipkart customer resides in these top 10 metros so technically, this service will cover 50 percent of its clientele. Going forward, the cut off time for orders will be pushed back to 2 pm for same day deliveries, depending on a customer’s pin code.

Starting today, customers in 10 cities - Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Manesar, Navi Mumbai, Thane - can get deliveries the same day from Flipkart as long as the order is placed by noon, for an additional Rs 200. As an introductory offer, from 28-30 April, customers will receive products worth up to Rs 5,000 free if not delivered on the same day.