MSME sellers on Flipkart’s e-commerce marketplace: E-commerce company Flipkart on Monday launched enhanced seller-focused policies for existing and new MSMEs on its marketplace. As an extension of initiatives taken last year, which included a streamlined onboarding process, simplified listing, and payment policies, Flipkart has now announced six policy changes under its Flipkart EDGE initiative focusing on pricing recommendations, promotions, rewards platform, fulfilment and speed initiatives, and guidance assistance to improve cost efficiency and sustainability of MSMEs selling on the marketplace.
The recommended pricing feature will suggest sellers about ideal prices for their products based on consumer insights, buying behaviour, and market trends, which the sellers may choose to implement. The feature is accessible for sellers from the seller dashboard to identify appropriate price points to list their products.
The Promotions feature improves transparency by displaying how promotions work and provides detailed information about the benefits and product offers to help sellers gain control over their participation and make more informed decisions.
The new rewards platform, said Flipkart, enhances the seller’s reward experience by bringing in more clarity around incentives and their eligibility criteria, along with flexibility in meeting them. The new platform provides for regular tracking, monitoring and governance of the rewards unlocking higher returns of investment and growth. It also significantly reduces the rewards payout cycle, enabling sellers to utilize the additional operating revenue to expand their businesses, the company said in a statement.
To make order processing easier for sellers, the Fulfillment Support and Speed Initiative has introduced multiple features to reduce operating cost for the sellers and use the right quality of packaging materials.
“Flipkart has worked on improving delivery speed to customers, enabling sellers to process more orders and effectively utilize their warehousing space resulting in increased capacity, timeliness and better ratings on the platform.”
Moreover, sellers will now have access to multimedia content in different languages on their dashboards through the ‘Guided assistance’. This year, the user interface was revamped with smart logic implemented on FAQ pages with detailed content to guide sellers making the portal more user-friendly.
Lastly, to help sellers boost the visibility for their products and provide customers with better purchase experiences and product recommendations, Flipkart has enabled video commerce for sellers to engage with their customers more and showcase their products through various formats such as reels, long-form videos, among others. The company has also launched a dedicated creator app for sellers to leverage the potential of video commerce gaining prominence in the Indian market.
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Rakesh Krishnan, Vice President and Head – Marketplace, Flipkart, said the new features under ‘Flipkart EDGE’ aim to provide continuous support to the seller community and foster sustained growth while enhancing the overall ease of doing business. “Our technology-driven solutions and capabilities are designed to improve the convenience and efficiency of online business operations.”
The policies and capabilities introduced in two phases last year by Flipkart encouraged over 11 lakh sellers (including Shopsy) to join the platform, with a 220 per cent increase in the seller base in 2022 compared to 2021, according to the company.
The announcement comes days after Flipkart’s supply chain arm Ekart launched its business-to-business (B2B) India-wide delivery and first-mile pick-up services for MSMEs — including manufacturers and retailers and brands — through a fleet of over 7,000 GPS-enabled trucks.