Are you a fan of online shopping? You have reason to cheer. You can bank on it for your last-minute purchases as e-tailers are now promising to offer same-day delivery. While international retailers such as Amazon are looking at drones to deliver a product in 30 minutes, domestic e-commerce players have many miles to go before they can hope to replicate the same.

Several e-tailers in India are testing the waters to garner more clicks. Industry players, however, say this may bleed the not-so-profitable firms further.

According to a Technopak report on e-tailing, the e-commerce market is estimated at $10 billion. The report points that Internet savvy consumers are fuelling the growth in the e-commerce space. Technopak notes that last mile connectivity will be the key differentiator.

Flipkart.com has launched its service called ‘in-a-day guarantee’. Customers in select cities can place their orders before 6 p.m. and get it delivered by the next working day. Flipkart charges Rs 90 as additional shipping charges.

Ravi Vora, Senior Vice-President, Marketing, Flipkart, said in a statement, “We have had a lot of customers requesting urgent deliveries for reasons ranging from occasion-led gifts to pre-travel shopping. But given the large volumes that we handle it wasn’t feasible to address them on a case-to-case basis. We have now built the capability into our supply chain and can now offer it as a guaranteed feature. This value-added service is available to consumers who need it, making online shopping a viable option even for last-minute purchases.”

Snapdeal and Tradus have also introduced the ‘same day’ delivery service in key metros.

Saurabh Goyal, V-P, Supply Chain Operations, Snapdeal.com said, “With the increasing competition in the e-commerce space, delivery has become an essential factor after price. Keeping up with our company motto of providing the widest assortment of goods and the best services we have managed to evolve our supply chain system to such an extent that we can now offer this service with ease.”

eBay India too has jumped onto the bandwagon and announced the first phase launch of the ‘9 Hour Delivery’ service. The company also created a special microsite, www.ebay.in/mumbai that features products available under this service.

Vidmay Naini, Business Head, Technology, PaisaPay & PowerShip, eBay India, said, “The ‘9 Hour Delivery’ concept gives consumers a faster and improved shopping experience. This is the first phase of the service, which is available to our Mumbai customers on popular technology product categories and will be scaled to key cities in India in a span of few months.”

Industry watchers, however, note that the biggest stumbling block for e-commerce players is creating an efficient supply chain and back-end infrastructure. Several online players said that logistics challenges formed the bulk of its problems with mechanisms like cash-on-delivery eroding wafer-thin margins.

Interestingly, several third party logistics providers are now geared up to service e-tailing clients and building dedicated verticals for this purpose. Some e-tailers are transforming their logistics arms into service providers for other e-tailers as well.

Technopak points out that as e-tailing grows it would be interesting to envisage a role for India Post in the last mile delivery. “India has 21,000 pin codes, and most 3PL (third party logistics players) are able to reach about 8,000-10,000 pin codes at best. India Post, with its formidable network across urban and rural India, and its already established mechanism to handle money orders, can harness this opportunity in a big way,” it added.

>bindu.menon@thehindu.co.in

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