In a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, Jeff Bezos committed investments worth $5 billion in the country. Standing by the commitment, Amazon today announced setting up of seven new warehouses aka Fulfilment Centres in India, a move that has created 1,200 fresh jobs. These FCs will largely cater to furniture and appliances section for Amazon, which still lags behind in terms of revenues.
Amazon had so far built 27 fulfilment centres with more than 5 Mn. cubic feet of storage space. With the extension of FCs, the count rises up to 34 FCs across 10 states. It is also mulling over launching 33 new delivery stations in India to boost up operations in its fast-growing market–India. Moreover, two already established FCs in Mumbai and Gurgaon will now serve the aforementioned category exclusively.
In talks with PTI, Amazon India vice president, India Customer Fulfilment, Akhil Saxena said,
We have set up a dedicated infrastructure of nine FCs and 33 exclusive delivery stations that will ensure faster and reliable delivery of large appliances and furniture to more than 150 cities. Between the nine dedicated FCs and 33 delivery stations, about 1,200 new job opportunities will be created. These will be a mix of temporary and on-roll jobs
The company has one of the advanced fulfilment networks across the globe. With Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) program, sellers can store their products in Amazon’s fulfilment centres. The team at Amazon then picks, packs, delivers, offers customer support services and executes returns for these products.The program enables sellers to scale their business and reach out to more customers.
The recently established centres will help in faster deliveries of products such as air conditioners, air coolers, refrigerators, washing machines, TVs and furniture. It takes on existing market players such as Flipkart and Snapdeal, both of them offering a huge range of furniture and home appliances. As per the company data, the electronics sector has seen nearly 200% growth in the last one year and grew 5X of daily volumes during Amazon’s last sale event held in January.
The company has also introduced its exclusive smartphones preinstalled with Amazon Pay, Prime and Kindle services, with Moto G5 in the lead. The company is seeking other brands as well to accelerate its smartphone sales through its latest idea. Since shopping, reading and binge watching are three other activities which a general consumer performs apart from voice calls and texting, the plan might buzz amid the consumers.
