Flipkart: Looking to sell your used mobile phones? Indian e-commerce platform Flipkart has announced a Sell Back Programme, with which users would be able to easily and reliably sell used mobile phones. In exchange, they would be able to get a Flipkart Electronic Gift Voucher for the appropriate buy-back value, the e-commerce platform said in a statement. Moreover, this programme would be available on all phones, irrespective of whether they had originally been purchased on Flipkart or not, and it would also be expanded to some additional categories over the course of the year.
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The move has come after the Flipkart Group acquired Yaantra, which is a company dealing in electronic recommerce. Yaantra aims to provide users with affordable refurbished smartphones, and its operations heavily rely on used phones that reach back to the market. Hence, the programme, which spans 1,700 pin codes currently, is a part of Flipkart’s effort towards a circular economy, the statement by the company added.
How to use Flipkart’s Sell Back Programme
To avail the opportunity being offered by Flipkart’s Sell Back Programme, customers would need to visit the Flipkart app and from the bottombar, select “Sell Back”. They would then need to answer three questions in order to assess the fair value of the used phone, and then confirm whether they would like to go ahead with the process at the assessed value. Once they confirm, the phone would be picked up from the customer’s house within 48 hours by a Flipkart executive, and once the condition of the device and information provided by the customer is verified, Flipkart would issue the voucher of the confirmed sell back value within a few hours.
An IDC survey has suggested that each year, India sees about 125 million used phones, out of which only 20 million end up reaching back to the market. This leads to e-waste being generated, without any solution. One aspect of the programme is solving this issue, while another aspect is the operations of Yaantra. However, a third important aspect is that the sell back value is given to the user in the form of a Flipkart Gift Voucher, which means that it could only be redeemed on Flipkart. This would mean an increase in customers for the platform which is always facing fierce competition from the multinational Amazon.