Taking the path of its competitors, India’s biggest e-commerce provider Flipkart announced the launch of its Marketplace Platform, which open up huge opportunity for numerous large and small sellers to list their products on Flipkart’s website and sell directly to the consumer.
Flipkart Marketplace platform is essentially a virtual mall giving users access to multiple brands and sellers under one roof, providing them wide variety of choice before making a purchase. Going forward users will be able to compare sellers and get the best prices at varied service levels for most products. On the other hand, sellers get benefited from the trust that Flipkart has built with its users by building a robust and scalable e-commerce platform.
“We created the blueprint for Flipkart Marketplace with the determination to take online shopping to the masses. While on the one hand it furthers the Flipkart promise of customer delight by giving more choices at competitive prices, it also serves as the foundation for entrepreneurship to flourish without having to worry about investing in any physical or virtual infrastructure and yet access millions of customers across the country with just a click. In the last 12 months, more than 80 million unique visitors have come to Flipkart. Five out of six online Indians visit our website. Sellers on Flipkart will get access to this vast user base – which is akin to the footfall in prime retail spaces in the top 10 cities of the country,” said Sachin Bansal, CEO and Co-Founder, Flipkart.
Flipkart Marketplace main aspect –
- A large part of the user experience (product selection, customer service and logistics) is seamless with an expanded selection of products.
- Flipkart will take care of shipping and doorstep delivery through its logistics partners – hence assuring users of a quality experience.
- Flipkart will establish a protection programme to resolve any complaints with the sellers.
- Sellers will be identified through a rigorous onboarding process and allowed to sell only genuine products.
- Sellers can list their items or select from Flipkart’s existing catalogue.
- Sellers can increase their sales multifold by reaching out to Flipkart’s large user base.
As on the launch Flipkart has around 50 sellers on-board that are selling in books, media, and consumer electronics categories.
Flipkart Prepaid Wallet restricted to digital goods
Flipkat has restricted its prepaid wallet service and now users can only use it to buy digital goods mainly E-books and Flyte Mp3’s. Earlier Flipkart allowed users to keep money in the wallet and allow them to purchase any thing from the site, which include both physical goods and digital goods.
In a mail from Flipkart for Wallet users, the website said about the discontinuation of prepaid wallet owing to following reasons – This is a temporary change until we get the required government approvals to run a marketplace wide wallet, The Flyte wallet will continue as a closed loop wallet only for digital purchases and Running a single seller wallet on the marketplace would have led to a bad customer experience – given our aggressive plans to scale up the number of sellers in the future.
But don’t worry this new rules applies to new top-ups to the wallet, if you still have unused top-up balance in you wallet you can continue to use it to make purchases across all categories till it is exhausted.