Indian festive orders through e-commerce surge 40-50% since lockdown

August 10, 2020: E-commerce and express companies are reporting a 40-50 percent increase in the festival commodities orders like Rakhis during Raksha Bandhan and ethnic wear during Eid compared to last year. Meanwhile, Blue Dart joined hands with FarEye to ensure on-time deliveries of Rakhis across 34000+ locations in India this Raksha Bandhan.

While speaking during a recent webinar organised by Indian Transport & Logistics News, Aaqyl Chagla, chief executive officer, Rapid Delivery, said, “In the last three to four months we saw a massive sale of festive commodities, as big as 40-50 percent increase through e-commerce. This includes Rakhis during the Rakshabandan and ethnic wear during Eid. Luckily India is a place of a lot of festivals and people take festivals very seriously. So these commodities contribute a lot to the e-commerce volumes for us.”

A FarEye release said, “Leveraging FarEye’s leading predictive logistics platform, Blue Dart, the leader in the express logistics industry, ensured timely, seamless, and contactless deliveries across the nation on the occasion of the popular festival, allowing people to celebrate with the same fervour and joy.” Rakhi packages constituted 11-12 percent of Blue Dart’s total retail store shipments.

FarEye has enabled Blue Dart to automate its last-mile delivery process with various innovative offerings like replacing the mobile number of customers’ incoming calls with the AWB details, digital cash collection, live monitoring of field executives, and real-time order status tracking for customers and more.

Kushal Nahata, CEO & co-founder, FarEye, said, “The past few months have made us realize the importance of reliable and on-time deliveries more than ever. With increasing physical distance and inability to go out, deliveries have become the saving grace be it for essential medicines, groceries, or an expression of love for dear ones in the form of gifts. Committed to our passion of making logistics better for everyone, we are enabling Blue Dart to provide hassle-free, accurate, and timely deliveries to people on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan, allowing them to enjoy the festival despite not being able to physically meet their families.”

Ketan Kulkarni, CMO & head, business development, said, “Blue Dart has always been a customer-centric organization and technology and automation has always been a major pivot for that focus. During this festive period, we were inundated with delivery requests from across the globe. We believe in 'Delivering Joy' and are glad that by leveraging FarEye's platform, we were able to deliver rakhi packages on-time, connecting families and more importantly showing gratitude to our Covid-19 warriors as part of our special ‘Rakhi Express’ offer, 2020.”