Flipkart has partnered with lakh of sellers and various MSMEs to ensure the delivery of products to the customers after the government allowed the sell of non-essential goods by e-commerce companies in green and orange zones. Since the lockdown has been extended till May 17, the government has announced some of the relaxations for various businesses and movement of people in limited areas. Under red zone areas supply of only essential items is allowed.
Flipkart spokesperson stated, “We welcome the government’s efforts in progressively charting out an exit plan from the lockdown and allowing e-commerce to serve consumers in the orange and green zones by fulfilling their products needs, additionally to serving essentials/grocery in the red zone through a secure supply chain and standard operating procedures (SOPs),” Flipkart’s seller support team is providing online counsel to prepare the platform to resume its services in a couple of days according to the government orders. Other e-commerce platforms are also preparing themselves to sell non-essential items with the essentials. Deliveries of non-essentials like laptops and refrigerators will relieve people and will help MSMEs to jump-start their businesses amid lockdown. Under the first two phases of lockdown government only allowed the delivery of essentials items like groceries, medicines etc. The e-commerce companies, as well as industries, have been constantly urging the government to expand the list of essential items.
“Users are thronging the platform looking to put orders for a good sort of products that they need to be been expecting an extended time. Apparel and household products topped the list for searches and orders placed. Snapdeal has continued to simply accept orders for both essentials and non-essentials during the lockdown period, and while orders for government-defined essentials were shipped out continuously, we’ll now start to deliver all other orders received by us,” Snapdeal spokesperson said. Even the sellers are keen to commence the operations, they will be assessing the area location of the customer and then they will deliver the order.
The Union Health Ministry has declared 130 districts in the country in the red zone, 284 in the orange zone and 319 in the green zone. The data provided will be followed till 10 May and then it will be further revised on a weekly basis. Major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmadabad and Bangalore have been considered under red zones and districts which have neither been labelled as the red or green zone will fall under the orange zone.
