Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale from Oct 13-17, prepares sellers

In order to empower and prepare sellers better during the peak festive demand season and to avoid a re-run of last year’s technical and logistical glitches, Flipkart has worked up a special training schedule and manpower ecosystem programme.

By Kunal Doley

In order to empower and prepare sellers better during the peak festive demand season and to avoid a re-run of last year’s technical and logistical glitches, Flipkart has worked up a special training schedule and manpower ecosystem programme.

Launched about two months ago, the e-commerce major has already reached out to over 6,000 sellers across the country through the two initiatives – ‘Flipkart Seller Campus’ and ‘Flipkart Helping Hands’.
Flipkart is starting its Big Billion Days sale from October 13 to 17. Last year, the mega event – the e-tailer ran for a day was marred with technical and logistical glitches. Several customers had reported automatic cancellation of orders after sellers ran out of stock. Later, Flipkart had to apologise to customers, acknowledging their experience was less than pleasant.

“We understand that online selling among many sellers is a new phenomenon and it is only through proper training and guidance that they will be able to handle their online businesses efficiently during unpredictably high demand,” said Manish Maheshwari , VP and head – seller ecosystem, Flipkart, adding, “Last year, there was a problem with inventory. While people were giving orders, the inventory was just not there. This year, we are taking special caution and giving sellers guidance and training on inventory management.”

For both the programmes, Flipkart has partnered with talent search and sourcing firm Skillventory across its top-five seller cities – Surat, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore. “We have received an overwhelming response from sellers who attended our sessions in the past few weeks,” said Maheshwari.
Under its Seller Campus programme, Flipkart is offering a four-hour training session to sellers on how to manage their inventory during the peak demand season. This includes training them on the new promotional dashboard, how to manage peak season demand and the best practices to maximise their sales during the festive season as well as to fulfill the high number of orders. The training sessions are being done in the classroom as well as the webinar formats.

“The objective here is to update sellers on how well Flipkart has prepared on all fronts – product and technology, operations and logistics, marketing and promotions – to make the festive season a huge success. Also, we wanted to reinforce the quality, trust and safety standards of Flipkart,” explained Maheshwari.

Flipkart’s Helping Hands initiative was borne out of the premise that sellers often complained about manpower issues, especially in the run-up to the festive season. “There has always been a shortage of trained manpower to handle e-commerce operations. During festive time, increase in demand leads to acute shortage. Hence, we launched ‘Flipkart Helping hands’ to prepare our sellers better. One of the key objectives is to create a pool of trained manpower who can be deployed during spike sales/festive seasons under the plug-n-play model,” said Maheshwari.

As per Maheshwari, Flipkart is providing this service at a discounted price of R9,999 per resource for the month of October as against the market rate of R15,000 per month.