Flipkart Stops Taking Orders, Amazon Only Delivers Essential Items

On March 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the whole country would be put under lockdown for the next 21 days. Following the announcement, one of India’s largest e-commerce platforms, Flipkart has halted all of its orders on its portal.

Earlier, e-commerce platforms were expected to receive approval from the government to operate to deliver essential items to people locked inside their houses. However, Flipkart said that to be able to do so, it would have to reorganize its operations.

And it was confirmed in an email sent by Flipkart’s senior vice president Adarsh Menon to all employees. Menon wrote that the company would first stop taking orders. After that, it would start sequentially enabling categories.

For this, 3 categories including grocery, large and non-large items have stopped operating. To sum up, Flipkart has completely shut down until further notice.

Meanwhile, Amazon, Flipkart’s fiercest rival, is also having the same problem but has a slightly different approach. Instead of halting its operations completely, Amazon has stopped taking orders for non-essential items and focusing on delivering essential orders.

Essential items here are household staples, healthcare items, and packaged foods. For all orders that do not belong to this category, buyers can cancel their orders and claim for a refund.

Flipkart is expected to do the same and take orders for essential items as soon as possible.

With the lockdown, the government only allows the delivery of essential items. However, there have been reports suggesting that delivery guys of these e-commerce platforms being harassed by on-ground police.

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