Ekart launches Warehousing as a Service

Ekart, India’s largest supply chain network and part of the Flipkart group, will now make its warehouses across the country available to brands, manufacturers, retailers, and SMEs as a part of its vision to become a fourth-party logistics (4PL) player in the country.

"The initiative will enable brands of all sizes, manufacturers, and retailers from across industries to leverage Ekart’s technologically-advanced fulfilment centres for flexible, affordable, and scalable inventory storage solutions," says an official release.

The end-to-end warehousing services by Ekart will include ready-to-use best-in-class warehousing space, order management, integrated logistics and inventory management, further helping brands scale their business. "Ekart will also offer specialised facilities such as temperature-controlled storage and storage for high-value inventory for businesses in need of these requirements."

Ekart has a pan India supply chain network spread across more than 20 million sq feet. To begin with, it will offer four dedicated sites across Bilaspur in Haryana, Malur in Karnataka, Saidham in Mumbai, and Uluberia (West Bengal) as well as 17 shared sites across India to businesses of all sizes. The warehouses will ease the fulfilment process of orders for customers by helping reduce the transit time and better delivery speed. "The state-of-the-art, Grade-A fulfilment centres are equipped to facilitate the safe and speedy delivery of orders. Ekart's capability to handle 80+ product categories will also now be available to the brands."

Mani Bhushan, Chief Business Officer, Ekart, says: “Ekart today is one of the largest supply chain companies in the country, and we are committed to helping businesses reach scale. Today, a majority of businesses across industries including manufacturing, D2C, and consumer electronics have a pain point of not being able to find Grade A warehousing and dealing with multiple partners for operations. We want to leverage our operations, infrastructure, and technology capabilities to provide ease of doing business while also reducing the cost of doing business and further strengthening and streamlining the nation’s supply chain ecosystem. We are positive that our deep understanding of the value chain will not only ease last-mile delivery for our partners but also help them focus on their core strengths, thus contributing to the larger economy.”

Some of the services provided by Ekart will be order management, return management, logistics management, vendor management and real-time visibility on inventory, the release added.