In preparation for the festive season sales, Amazon India has expanded its last-mile delivery network to 12,500 local stores and retail outlets in 50 cities to address both express and regular deliveries within a radius of 2km to 4km.
Amazon’s delivery network, which started as a pilot programme called ‘I Have Space’ in May 2015 with 2,500 stores, has now been ramped up to reach deeper into tier-II and -III cities. It includes some stores under the Amazon Kirana Now programme for grocery delivery. Customers will also be able to pick up their orders at some of these outlets.
“We have added 10,000 stores this year, which cut across stationery stores, corner stores, modern trade outlets, telecom shops, beauty stores and others. These will double up as pick-up points and some of them are also enabled to handle returns. Being a part of the programme will also drive footfalls to these stores,” said Akhil Saxena, Vice President of India customer fulfillment at Amazon India.
Each of these stores is expected to deliver an average of 20-30 orders a day. While Amazon India did not comment on the share of its peak volumes the network will handle, the numbers would be ‘significant.’ “The network stores get paid per package delivered and we have also enabled cash-on-delivery in the programme. The payment to the store partners happens on a monthly basis,” said Saxena, adding that the partners are on boarded by channel managers.
The store owners are also trained to measure their performance and reconcile the cash-on-delivery amounts on a daily basis. The deliveries will be fulfilled by the store staff during non-peak hours. Earlier this year, rival marketplace Flipkart announced a tie-up with Apollo Pharmacy and corner stores to create a network of 1,000 outlets for last-mile delivery, which double up as pick-up points for customers.
Flipkart processed over 3 lakh shipments a day in May, with pick-up points handling the lastmile delivery of 10% of its load. Amazon has been expanding its pick-up network globally. The company signed up supermarket chain Morrisons in UK, apart from installing fully manned centres where buyers can pick up their orders from specific lockers across universities in the US.
Source: Economic Times
