Amazon India on Thursday announced that it is opening up its logistics and order fulfilment infrastructure even for those D2C brands that do not sell on its platform. The e-commerce major also announced that it has inked a MoU with India Post to simplify cross-border logistics. At the same time, it has strengthened its partnership with Indian Railways’ Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation (DFC) of India for faster deliveries of seller orders to customers.
At the sidelines of the Amazon Smbhav Summit, Manish Tiwary, Country Manager India Consumer Business, Amazon India explained that this move will enable D2C brands across India to leverage Amazon’s logistics and supply chain capabilities to serve customers orders from various sales channels including their own website.
“ D2C brands sell their products across various channels and are seeking a reliable partner. As per our internal metrics, when we promise to deliver on a certain day, we are able to achieve that 99.8 per cent of the time. We are now saying that even if a merchant does not sell on Amazon they can use our warehousing and transportation network,” he added. The company added that multi-channel fulfilment will democratise customer order fulfilment and enable sellers to leverage Amazon’s capabilities to pick, pack and ship products to the customer from the sellers’ inventory in Amazon fulfilment centres.
‘Add new routes’
As the Indian Railways’ DFC network expands over the next few years, Amazon India said it will add and utilse new freight railway routes and capabilities for faster movement of customer packages. Under the company’s partnership with the Indian Post, Indian exporters on Amazon’s Global Selling Program will be able to book their shipments, print shipping labels, pay for shipping directly from their seller central account and then drop these shipments at Dak Niryat Kendras for exports.
The company added that these initiatives are in line with its commitment to “digitise 10 million MSMEs, enable $20 billion in cumulative exports and create 2 million direct and indirect jobs in India by 2025.”
Responding to a query on consumption trends, Tiwary said despite macro-economic factors such as inflationary pressures, the platform has seen improvement in consumer sentiments over the last 2-3 months. “ We are seeing strong premiumisation trends in many categories even as we talk about inflation indicating buoyant customer sentiment. My sense is that it is going to be one of the best Diwali seasons that we have seen over the last 3-4 years,” Tiwary said