Fulfilment by force? Flipkart's aggressive strategy to boost festive season sales

Last year, as the annual festive season sales drew to a close, one of the biggest direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands in India’s home furniture space saw its sales drop to zero on e-commerce marketplace Flipkart. “We lost 3-4 days of revenue from Flipkart,” an executive at the D2C brand recalls.

While the brand thought this was down to a tech issue, it soon found that it had been blacklisted by the e-commerce giant. “When we enquired further, they told us that if we wanted to continue on Flipkart, we had to have all our orders fulfilled by Ekart (Flipkart’s in-house logistics arm). There was no other option.”

The D2C brand is not the only one to receive such an ultimatum from Flipkart. Rishi Kandari, a former account manager with Flipkart who now runs e-commerce consultancy firm Signature Ecom Solutions, says there has always been a push by Flipkart to sellers to be part of its fulfilment programme, Fulfilment by Flipkart (FBF). This involves the seller sending inventory to be stocked in Flipkart’s warehouses even before a customer places an order.