Amazon opens second Fulfilment Centre in India, near Bangalore

Amazon India on Monday announced that it will open its second Fulfilment Centre in the country. The first one in South India, the centre, located near Bangalore is spread over 150,000 square feet, will be operational by February with inbound and outbound services. The new multilevel facility will be equipped with state-of-the-art warehousing systems and processes according to Amazon. It will be able to stock millions of products from new and existing sellers using Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA).

Speaking about the opening of new Fulfilment Centre, Amit Agarwal, Vice President and Country Manager, Amazon India, said, "We are very excited by the tremendous response from sellers of all sizes for our Fulfilment by Amazon offering in the short span of seven months since launch of Amazon.in. We are also thrilled by the customer response to our recently launched Next-Day Guaranteed Delivery service in several cities. Today over 120,000 plus products are available for next day delivery across eligible pin codes in several cities. The launch of the new fulfilment centre in Bangalore is part of our continued investment in providing fast and reliable delivery across vast selection of products, and enabling sellers of all sizes to achieve nationwide scale."

Adding to that M N Vidyashankar, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Commerce and Industries, Government of Karnataka, said, "I congratulate Amazon India on its ongoing success, and I am pleased that together we were able to bring this significant investment that retailers across South India and especially Karnataka will benefit from."

According to Amazon, the investment is a part of the company's efforts to improve its online shopping experience in India, and get a scalable and bigger national platform for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). It will also help customers get a broader selection of categories available for immediate shipment and eligible for Amazon's Next-Day Guaranteed service.

The first centre is located in Bhiwandi on the outskirts of Mumbai. According to the official press release, the new centre will allow sellers to save money as they can replace their upfront capital expense with low variable cost and pay only for the storage space they use and the orders Amazon fulfils. Sellers will also have the flexibility to choose the number of products they want to have fulfilled by Amazon.

The company says that globally, sellers converting items to FBA generally see a 30-40 per cent uplift in sales. "Sellers have greatly appreciated our Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) service, a pay-as-you-go fulfilment service and a key feature of our e-commerce platform. With the new centre in Bangalore we will enable many more SMEs in India, particularly in South India to take advantage of this service and help them expand their online business. We will continue to do the heavy lifting on behalf of sellers so that they can focus on providing our customers with vast selection at low prices," said Amit Deshpande, Director & GM Seller Services, Amazon India.