After Amazon, Flipkart announces one-day delivery

Within a week of rival and global e-commerce giant Amazon announcing its one-day delivery in certain Indian cities, India's leading e-commerce marketplace Flipkar.com followed suit with an 'In-a-day Guarantee'.

The service would initially be available in  Delhi, Noida, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad and would entail a shipping fee of Rs90-per item.

In a release Ravi Vora, senior VP – Marketing, Flipkart said, the e-retailer already had a lot of customers requesting urgent deliveries, but in view of the large volumes that the company handled it was not feasible to address them on a case-to-case basis.

He added, the company had now built the capability into its supply-chain and could now offer it as a guaranteed feature.

The service would cost an extra cost of Rs90 per ordered item, over and above the normal product and delivery cost. Launching of the service meant that the company had to streamline its supply chain, which led to higher costs.

Business Standard quoted Vora as saying that the company was expecting around five-15 per cent of its active customers to avail of this feature, adding, on the revenue side the company expected a larger contribution.

According to experts, the financial implication of the new service would depend on how many customers opted for it. The report quoted an unnamed industry source as saying, if a substantial number of customers did not use this feature, the cost might go up further.