Homegrown e-commerce marketplace Flipkart on June 30, said it has launched grocery services in Coimbatore with the opening of its first fulfillment center in the city to meet growing demand. Spread across an area of over 1.2 lakh sq ft, the newly built facility will generate direct employment for nearly 1,200 people, Flipkart said.
This will be Flipkart’s second grocery facility in Tamil Nadu after Chennai and ninth in the South. This sustained growth in Flipkart’s grocery business is also giving a boost to the local food processing industry, supporting Indian agriculture and small and medium farmers.
The Coimbatore fulfillment center is in line with Flipkart’s plans to strengthen its grocery supply chain infrastructure across the country and add over 800,000 sq. ft of space through five new fulfillment centres this year.
In the initial stages, only a part of the facility will be utilized, for which over 500 people will be hired. It will be the only facility for Flipkart which will be almost entirely run by women constituting 90% of the overall workforce. To enable more women to join the workforce, Flipkart under its initiative Vividhta provides workplace policies that support women and their career progression.
The new fulfillment centre will further augment the Walmart-owned firm’s capabilities to cater to more consumers, including millions of first-time e-commerce consumers from southern India. Over 52% of Flipkart consumers are from Tier-II and beyond cities.
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Rajneesh Kumar, senior vice-president and chief corporate affairs officer, Flipkart, said, “Grocery is among the fastest-growing categories within e-commerce and as the country’s homegrown e-commerce marketplace, we are at the forefront of meeting customers’ essential requirements at their doorsteps in a safe and hygienic manner. Coimbatore, while being an economic centre also offers a strategic location to serve nearby regions efficiently and the opening of our first grocery warehouse in the city serves as a testament to that.”
Flipkart Grocery offers over 7,000 products across 200 categories, ranging from daily household supplies, staples, snacks and beverages, to confectionery, and personal care. Its grocery offering is backed by an intuitive user experience through voice-enabled shopping for groceries, credit offerings, and open box deliveries.
Flipkart has 8 Fulfilment Centres in Tamil Nadu, with a total area spread across 1.5 million square feet. and nearly 150 delivery hubs. The Flipkart group has created over 52,000 direct employment in the state. The firm also has its state-of-the-art data center in Chennai to support its robust e-commerce operations.
Over the past few years, the South region has emerged as one of the fastest-growing regions for e-commerce across the country, with lakhs of new customers, sellers and kirana partners taking to e-commerce to meet their requirements while making use of the entrepreneurship opportunities it offers. Flipkart said it is making e-commerce more inclusive for customers, with the Flipkart app now available in as many as 11 Indian languages, including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
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