Meeting the challenges thrown up by logistics has been like one of those “final frontiers” for Flipkart. To fulfil this endeavour, Flipkart is collaborating with dPronto, a start-up that specialises in last mile delivery space, to not only meet these challenges but also empower the youth in the rural areas on India.
Flipkart believes that its partnership with dPronto will benefit the youth from the lower strata of society and raise employment opportunities for them. dPronto and its group company, Empower Pragati will also be a beneficiary in this partnership.
Empower Pragati will provide the door way through which unemployed youth can seek a better lease of life through Flipkart’s extended support. Empower Pragati will channelize the youth and provide Flipkart with freshly trained and motivated logistics staff across 600 towns of India.
In a press release, the company stated that “dPronto tie-up also meets a real business need, of collecting packages from Flipkart’s Fulfilment Centres or from Sellers directly, who constitutes a significant number on Flipkart’s huge marketplace, and delivering them to customers.”
The partnership will largely aid Flipkart as the e-commerce company will get to increase its logistics network to meet the ever growing demands of supply chain. Empower Pragati has even tied up with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), to impart training to the unemployed youth.
“Since its inception in 2010, Empower Pragati has skilled over 100,000 underprivileged people. The organization holds a target to train 20,000 in the next 3 years for jobs in the Logistics sector alone,” stated dPronto.
The rise of e-commerce sector has left a large scope for creating employment in the logistics sector. The e-commerce logistics sector is expected to reach $5.1 billion by 2020. Last mile logistics has been a critical barrier for Flipkart to expand into newer territories.
As most of the population in India resides in rural areas, Flipkart had to figure out a strategy to meet their demands as swiftly as it does for urban pockets. As dPronto is focused in last mile logistics, Flipkart would be able to reach out to its untapped customer base. According to dPronto last mile logistics comprises 40% of e-commerce logistics and is expected to reach $2.1 billion by 2020.
Neeraj Agarwal, Senior Director at Flipkart’s Delivery Operations said that
Flipkart is committed in its social objective of transforming lives of less privileged youth through respectable job roles. This tie up with dPronto gives us access to Empower Pragati’s vast network of 600 centres across the entire country that trains and supplies logistics staff, who can support Flipkart in its last mile delivery.
dPronto, through Empower Pragati hopes to train over 2 million youth by 2020.
