GROUP RESEARCH ON

FLIPKART BY GROUP 1
What is Flipkart

 Flipkart is amongst India’s biggest startup success stories.It was founded in 2007 by Sachin
Bansal & Binny Bansal alumni of IIT-Delhi and former employees of Amazon.
 It is one of the major e-commerce market leaders in the country with over 200mn
registered users and 150 million products over 80 categories.
 It simply is a virtual market place which provides online marketplace to both buyers and
sellers. It has market valuation around 24.9 Billion USD and has a traffic of around
8million shipment/month.
 Walmart has acquired 75% of stack in Flipkart back in 2018.
 Flipkart started off with a direct-to-consumer model selling books and some other
products, before turning to a marketplace model which connect sellers and buyers and
expanding its catalogue,and presently works on B2C(Business to customer model).
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 Flipkart-Profitibality
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400 436.15

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 Operations Management in eCommerce

 Operations management (OM) is is concerned with converting materials and labor into
goods and services as efficiently as possible to maximize the profit of an organization.
  Operations management teams attempt to balance costs with revenue to achieve the
highest net operating profit as possible.

Inputs Operations Output

Capital Inventory Finished Goods

Raw Material Supply Chain Packaging
Machinery Capacity Strategy Warehouse & Storage
Workers Quality Control Distribution
Process Strategy Services
Operation Management Parameters

Demand Supply Analysis Inventory Management Supply Chain Management

Customer Engagement
Capacity Management Process & Layout Strategy strategies
 Supply Chain Management

Operations like
Product and Tech dealing
Procurement, Warehouse, Business Development
with Web Management
Logistics and Customer dealing with Sales
and EPR System
Support
Procurement and Warehouse Management
System
 Buyers deal with the Sellers directly and delivery will be done by Flipkart.
 Inventory is managed by WS Retail (pet project of Flipkart).
 Two levels of sourcing : Regional and Central
 There are seven major warehouses and over 500 small regional locations.
 3 Major segments of WMS:

Quality
Inward
Check & Packing
Process
Scan
 Order

Incoming Quality &

Product
Loading
Inventory
products check for Transit

Unloading & Packaging & Bulk

Unpacking Store Labelling Bagging

Quality & Labelling Packing

Product & Logging
Quality Sorting
check Check
 There are 2 models of flipkart operations

Market
Place

Operation
Models

Inventory
  When customer orders a product

Warehouse
Inventory

Collection Transit Dispatch

Retailer Pick up Customer
Centre Centre Centre

 Packaging  Quality Check  Sorting

 Labelling  Logging  Can be of multiple
stages
 Reverse logistics

Dispatch Transit Collection

Customer Pick up Supplier
Centre Centre Centre

 Quality Check  Packaging  Sorting

 Labelling  Can be of multiple
 Logging stages

Warehouse
Return Centre Inventory

 Quality Check  Stored

Supplier Management

 There are many suppliers that provide services like sellers, packaging material etc.
 Flipkart categorizes its sellers in 3 categories depending upon products sold per day
o Gold seller
o Silver seller
o Bronze seller

For Gold seller an individual person is deployed to cater their needs

Logistics and Reverse Logistics

 In April 2013, Flipkart introduced inhouse logistics called “eKart” (EKL).

 eKart offers delivery logistics, reverse logistics, pay on delivery, billing, tracking and reporting.
 While 90% of COD and 70% of overall shipment is done by eKart rest is done by 3PL services.
 Flipkart has 30 days return policy to build the customer trust following either of two paths:
Replacement or Store credit.
 Major Impact of Covid-19 on eCommerce Sector

Surge in orders Supply side disruption

Change in consumer Closures
behavior

Restrictions non Increase in operating Limited Staff Additional

essential goods cost due to COVID-19 Govt.Compliance
Changes in Operations and Supply chain to
tackle problems

 Change in operation strategy and plant layouts to provide safe work environment to
employees.
 Hiring new employees to bloster supply chain
 New/Alternate supply chain are incorporated due to supply side disruptions
 Putting additional safety measures, testing guidelines and protocols in place at every point
of supply chains to meet consumer as well as employee
 Working closely with suppliers as well as govt to streamline delivery of inbound goods to
Warehouses.
 Make shift arrangements for inter-state travels of employees.
Changes in Operations and Supply chain to
tackle problems

 Buying/Renting new office spaces/warehouse to cater surge in demand and to fulfill Govt
guidelines of social distancing
 Providing vaccination to employees and providing financial aids even at expense of rising
operating costs.
 Expansion of product range to provide alternate to products which are out of stock
 Addition of new sellers to the system to cater supply side disruption and smooth delivery
from the area which are near by to buyers
Challenges to the e-Commerce in this Covid-
19 Scenario

As the country continues to battle the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, employees across the Flipkart Group have been working to
keep supply lines open to ensure that Indian consumers have safe and timely access to essential daily necessities. Some, in addition to this, have
also been volunteering their time to help colleagues and fellow Indians in their time of need. All the while, many have been battling crises of
their own.

From vaccination drives to healthcare initiatives, physical and mental health check-ins to financial aid amid emergencies, our aim has been to
solve for our employees’ current needs with urgency and empathy.

Within beats of the announcement, the Program Management team at Flipkart faced the gargantuan task of bringing cross functional teams
together in driving the solutioning, planning and launching of quick-fire solutions to over 250 million online shoppers, employees, and the entire
Flipkart seller community — all of whom were now confined to their homes.

All orders that customers had placed before the lockdown, including those placed on the night before the lockdown came into force, were put on
hold owing to payment restrictions. 

To navigate government regulations, it was imperative for Company and the delivery team to collaborate with Flipkart’s compliance and legal
teams.

Pull through the pressures of an unprecedented environment and keep each other motivated.
 TWO NEW WINGS OF FLIPKART
FLIPKART SUPERMART FLIPKART WHOLESALE

With increase in demand for quality food and
household supplies, Flipkart invested in scaling up
grocery operations across the country as Flipkart
SuperMart. Flipkart SuperMart has more than 7,000
products available across over 200 categories and is
currently serving more than 50 tier-1 and tier-2 cities
of India. Flipkart is looking at subscription programme
for groceries in 2021, to retain its customer base, post
the pandemic.
Flipkart Wholesale is a B2B marketplace to help
small businesses in India source directly from
manufacturers and producers. Flipkart launched this
wing, keeping in mind the ease of doing business for
MSMEs and rightly saw 75% growth in sales every
month.
FLIPKART’s STRATEGY TO COMBAT THE IMPACT OF COVID

Working days, nights and weekends, Flipkart’s team

responded rapidly amid the unprecedented challenges
presented by the COVID-19 lockdown. Leveraging technology
and forging sound collaborations, the Flipkart Management
Team worked with cross functional product & engineering
teams to devise solutions to facilitate the delivery of essential
items to anxious customers. Read the following excerpts
from relentless Flipkart employees who were prepared to go
to great lengths to serve their customers.

CASHLESS. CONTACTLESS. CONVENIENT

 “The COVID-19 crisis put us in a fix, but this was a unique opportunity for us.”

 “Customer-centric thinking was the crux of our solutions. Every solution that the team came up with had one end-goal: To ensure
that our customers’ needs were met and that essential products would be delivered to them as soon as possible”

 “The focus was on safe and contactless payment options for customers. The digital penetration in India is going up and most
places have internet access, and that helped us.”
The COVID crisis in India had forced many brands to implement a new set of strategies, to ensure
continual growth and market occupancy. Flipkart was no exception to this.

SAFETY AND HYGIENE: Flipkart undertook strong
hygiene measures to safeguard all its employees
against the global pandemic. They started using
sensor-based sanitizer dispensers to avoid contacts and
eradicate all doubts of customers related to sanitisation
of products and packages.
STEPPING UP ONLINE DISCOUNTS: Despite a
rise in input and freight cost that affected almost all
categories of products, Flipkart offered heavy
discounts on smartphones, apparel and groceries as
brands and marketplaces were rushing to liquidate
stock and lift consumer sentiment ahead of the
festive season.

CONTACTLESS PAYMENT MODEL: RAMPING UP HIRING: Flipkart hired 23,000 people

Contactless payments enabled a large part of
Flipkart’s customer base to pay online or use other
modes of payment that didn’t require physical
contact.
across its supply chain in the first two quarters of the
pandemic, including delivery executives as the e-
commerce marketplace strengthened the supply chain to
meet growing demand while creating additional
employment.
WHAT ARE THE GROUP’S LEARNINGS?

 Learning about components of such a complex Supply chain systems is a very much
informative and learning for us.
 We heard many new terms like Reverse logistics.
 Different components of Operations management of e-Commerce.
 How they tackled the disruption caused from the Covid-19.
 Learned to manage and delegate work across the diverse set of background, with progress
and quality not being compromised.
THANK YOU!