Flipkart’s arch-rival Amazon has picked over 100 Vodafone stores in nine cities through a partnership with the telecom giant to act as pick-up stores for customers.
Amazon India will leverage the wide reach of Vodafone stores to provide a “safe and convenient” option for customers who may not be available during the day to receive their package, the company said. The pick-up facility is available in cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Jaipur, Indore, Ahmedabad etc. Customers can select these points as a pick-up location on the checkout page of their order while shopping on Amazon.
Strengthening its last-mile delivery process, Amazon has been turning commercial spots into its pick-up points for customers to pick up their packages if they are unable to receive it at their addresses during the daytime. After setting up pick-up kiosks at places with high customer density including railway stations, metro stations, business parks etc., Flipkart’s arch-rival Amazon has now picked over 100 Vodafone stores in nine cities through a partnership with the telecom giant announced today. Moreover, it has nearly 3,000 pick-up points in 150 cities in India in partnership with Kirana stores.
Customers will be able to select the pick-up point while ordering their product on the Amazon website. “The Vodafone store network has a wide presence,” said Prakash Rochlani, Director – Last-Mile Transportation, Amazon India in a statement, that will help Amazon in enhancing its customer experience by allowing customers to get their packages delivered on time instead of postponing it as per their availability at their location.
The pick-up facility is available in cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Jaipur, Indore, Ahmedabad, etc., even as Amazon is looking to double the presence in the Vodafone store network by the end of 2019. Amazon has expanded the capacity of its fulfillment centers (warehouses) to over 26 million cubic feet of storage space for sellers inventory, PTI reported and had doubled its delivery partner network with over 1,400 ‘delivery stations’ across 750 cities.
In September, Flipkart had announced onboarding close to 27,000 Kirana stores based in 700 cities to boost its delivery network. The company had said last month that it expanded its pick-up operations in 800 more cities in the past six months. Flipkart claimed of benefitting over 60,000 sellers from this expansion and that new PIN code additions in total represent nearly 40 percent rise in serviceable cities across India.
