Flipkart Launches Scheduled Delivery Service in Four Cities

Flipkart, soon after rolling out its Flipkart First annual subscription service for frequent shoppers, has now launched a new service called Scheduled Delivery. The new service will be initially available in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata, and Flipkart says Scheduled Delivery will be extended in other cities soon.

The new supply-chain feature will allow customers to choose a specific date and time for delivery of their Flipkart order. The popular online retailer notes that customers can now choose delivery slots starting as early as the next day.

Flipkart claims that the Scheduled Delivery feature is not currently available with any other e-commerce websites in India. Notably, the new supply-chain feature will be initially available for the large appliances category and will be gradually extended to other select categories. The Scheduled Delivery is currently free of cost for Flipkart customers.

In addition, the online retailer added that it will soon be introducing installation along with delivery during the pre-selected slots keeping customer requirements for large appliances category.

Commenting on the Scheduled Delivery announcement, Rahul Chari VP, Supply Chain Engineering at Flipkart said, "Scheduled Delivery as a feature, serves to enhance the online shopping experience, especially in metros where time constraints are a huge bottleneck for customers. While this is especially true of large appliances - we intend to extend this benefit to other categories soon."

Flipkart on Wednesday announced its annual subscription service with a subscription fee of Rs. 500 per year. However, the 75,000 customers from the lucky draw announced in May get the subscription free of cost till September 10.

Notably, the Flipkart First service is similar to the Amazon Prime premium subscription service in the US, and it will be interesting to see if this forces Amazon to bring Prime to India.

For those unaware, Flipkart had rolled out In-a-Day Guarantee Delivery shipping in select cities across the country in December last year, and in April, Flipkart introduced a 'Same-day Guarantee' delivery service in select cities.