Retail

Flipkart looks to deliver large appliances the very next day


Metro customers buying large appliances on Flipkart during the upcoming Diwali season may expect deliveries and installation the next day itself, said a company executive. For this, the company has beefed up its back-end supply-chain processes to deliver orders within 24 hours in top cities.

Ahead of its flagship sale Big Billion Days (BBD), online retailer Flipkart is ramping up its large appliances category to bump up its gross merchandise value (GMV) through sale of these high-ticket items. The homegrown player expects large appliances and television to form 25% of the overall market this festive season.

Large appliance is among the top three categories for Flipkart after smartphones and fashion.

“We expect large appliances to clock 2.5 times more sales during this festive season when compared to last year BBD,” said Sandeep Karwa, head of large appliances at Flipkart. “Large appliances create customer stickiness by building trust with the customer, prompting them to come to the platform for other small-ticket purchases as well.”

The ticket size of large appliances, range anywhere between Rs 20,000-30,000.

Apart from providing quicker deliveries and affordability options such as no cost EMI, Flipkart has also enhanced browsing experience for customers.

“For instance, if a user needs to buy a TV, they can now share the room size or the distance from where they want to view it, thereby filtering the recommendations,” said Karwa, adding that browsing products will now be more intuitive. Moreover, the recommendations will also be filtered based on the availability of the products in the given pincode.

Karwa claims that the company has also doubled its warehouses with presence in cities like Guwahati, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Coimbatore to meet the demands during the festive season.

Experts tracking the online retail market believe that while addition of such features may not be the sole trigger to purchase during the festive season, it will contribute to sales in the long run.

“Large appliances usually see more traffic from smaller towns and cities as e-commerce eases the availability and accessibility of products in the hinterland region,” said Anil Kumar, chief executive of consulting firm RedSeer. “This is the time of the year when customers usually look to redecorate their homes or change its look, thereby contributing to sales of large appliances.”

Currently about half of Flipkart’s gross sales come from smartphones and about 26% from fashion, as per industry estimates.

However, this will change as large appliances have become a major focus for the homegrown player. They also launched an in-house brand for private labels almost a year ago, in an attempt to clock higher margins in the high-ticket category. Flipkart claims that products under its large appliances brand MarQ are priced almost 20-30% lower when compared to other brands.

This festive season is anticipated to the biggest of all as Flipkart, flush with funds, now has the backing of US retail giant Walmart, while its biggest rival Amazon India continues to have deep pockets.

ET had earlier reported that Flipkart expects to cross $1 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) during the five-day BBD, while Amazon India hopes to increase their sales by “manyfolds” this year.





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