Flipkart's logistics arm eKart now offers services to other firms

The Flipkart Group on Thursday announced that its supply chain arm, eKart Logistics, will now offer its end-to-end supply chain solutions to brands, platforms and small and large businesses across the country.

Established in 2009, eKart currently delivers close to 100 million shipments a month.

The company, which has developed a tech-enabled pan-India supply chain network, will now offer services like shipping, inventory management, distribution, and aggregation to other e-commerce firms.

Jeeves, the services arm of Flipkart, will provide end-to-end solutions (including installation, demo and repair services) for the after-sales needs of brands through its expert network of technical workforce across India.

“As a homegrown group, we are committed to the growth of the digital economy in India, and a strong and dependable supply chain is integral to help businesses grow and scale. As a supply chain that has grown and evolved with the e-commerce industry, we understand the unique opportunities and challenges present in the Indian market and are agile to evolve with them to provide the most efficient delivery service for businesses,” Hemant Badri, senior vice president at eKart, says.

This comes at a time when the Walmart-owned e-commerce marketplace has announced a slew of policy changes to attract new sellers.

The policy changes under “Flipkart EDGE” have been introduced to address the growing needs of all its sellers to help them to enter the next phase of growth in their respective journey, by significantly improving their ease of doing business on the Flipkart platform, the online retailer says.

The mix of policy changes and capabilities include a new payment policy with faster payment settlement cycle, 10-minute onboarding, guaranteed ROI on ad spends, low return cost for performing sellers, deals with Cleartrip integration for travel-related requirements along with a host of other integrated benefits.

Flipkart aims to ease the liabilities for sellers and free up their working capital with its new payment policy. “Flipkart will now process seller payments 7-10 days from dispatch, making it the fastest and most predictable payment settlement platform,” the e-commerce firm says.

"As a democratic marketplace, we want to ensure that all our seller partners can grow their business and keep pace with the growing consumer needs. We continue to innovate and grow the e-commerce marketplace segment in India with industry-first innovations and equip MSMEs and seller partners on their journey towards strong, sustainable growth," says Jagjeet Harode, senior director and head – marketplace, Flipkart.