Bengaluru: Flipkart, India’s homegrown e-commerce marketplace, continues to strengthen ecosystem partnerships and prioritise the interests of a large group of stakeholders, including customers, sellers, MSMEs, kiranas and offline retail stores. As the country starts preparing for the upcoming festive season and much-awaited Big Billion Days, Flipkart is connecting more than 5,000 offline branded retail stores from 300+ cities across the country on its platform. This includes small and large format brand stores offering products from fashion, large appliances, mobiles and consumer electronics as part of this programme. Piloted in 2020, when the pandemic impacted these stores, this programme helps offline sellers to leverage Flipkart’s expertise and customer reach to help stores grow their business through technology support.
This holds importance for hundreds of local brands that will be able to showcase their selection and products to lakhs of customers beyond their local catchment area and grow their reach during an important festive period. Piloted in late-2020 for the fashion category, Flipkart’s programme has witnessed very encouraging growth this past year, which has led to the addition of the 3 new categories – large appliances, mobiles and consumer electronics. Flipkart is leveraging technology and advanced inventory management systems to enable these trusted retail stores with the goodness of e-commerce. It covers both metros and T2+ regions, solving the needs of both consumers and brands. Some of these include trusted branded retail chains such as Poorvika in the South region and CMM Arena in the state of Goa. The programme addresses the metro customers’ needs for faster delivery of the latest products and also enables aspirational consumers in Tier-2+ regions to get access to a much wider and latest branded selection.
Speaking about this important initiative, Rajneesh Kumar, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Flipkart Group, said, “At Flipkart, our priority lies in creating a meaningful ecosystem of partners that can reap the benefits of e-commerce, especially during the festive season. Today, we are proud to facilitate PAN-India consumer market access for over 5,000 branded retail stores, which enables them to embrace opportunities driven by the best technology. We look forward to scaling this programme over the next few months and making products from branded retail partners that may be available to a much larger audience across India.”
Speaking about the partnership with Flipkart, Uvaraj Natarajan, Founder & CEO- Poorvika, said, “Poorvika has garnered remarkable loyalty across 425+ stores in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Pondicherry, Mumbai, Pune and Trivandrum. Being a trusted offline retail chain and with an aim to grow our footprint across the country, we have partnered with Flipkart. This partnership will help customers to conveniently access all products available at a Poorvika retail store, on Flipkart. We believe our customers will benefit immensely courtesy of technology integration. We look forward to a good festive season with Flipkart.”
Sharing his views on the partnership with Flipkart this festive season, Hari Kaul, General Manager CMM Arena, said, “CMM Arena is proud to bring a range of large appliances on Flipkart, with an aim to extend our digital presence and engage with customers across a larger geographical reach. This will enable a new phase of growth for CMM Arena as we grow our reach across the length and breadth of Goa through Flipkart.”
Through this programme, Flipkart is creating opportunities for branded retail stores to connect with consumers across the country to deliver the best products. This will continue to elevate the customer’s online shopping experience seamlessly, as people get access to larger selections through a safe and sanitised delivery process. This strategy further strengthens Flipkart’s product portfolio for the much-awaited festive season – especially the 2021 edition of The Big Billion Days.
