New Delhi: Last mile delivery has emerged as a major focus area for e-commerce giant Flipkart and there are various measures that the company has introduced in this direction, including setting up of experience centres and pick-up zones at tech parks, where office employees can collect their orders from a single outlet.
In the latest in its series of initiatives in this regard, EKart, the rebranded logistics arm of Flipkart, will now deploy personnel at the corner stores in a radius of 500 to 800 metres for last-mile delivery and has signed on a network of 700 corner stores across 28 cities.
EKart has also reportedly partnered with 280 outlets of Apollo Pharmacy, where customers can pick up their shipments. This initiative has been taken in order to strengthen Flipkart’s logistics business to serve third-party orders as well.
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Neeraj Aggarwal, vice-president of operations at Flipkart told ET that the company has currently tied-up with small corner stores, photocopy centres, mobile stores and internet cafes, which will offer better scalability to serve towns. This also is helping all the corner stores expand their income.
At present there are over 15,000 orders a day through corner stores and by March 2017, the alternate delivery model will be used to fulfil 35 per cent of Ekart's overall volumes.
