Back in 2012, Manjunath Ramappa who was attending to customers at one of the largest retail chains inIndianoticed the changes in the online world around him. As the online shoppers were taken by huge discounts and deals, the salesman made it up to be a warehouse manager at the fashion portal Zivame.
The flashy online catalogues of apparel, perfume and clothes are drawing Indians to e-commerce portals, but behind them there is a structured network attached by technology and manned by employees like the aforementioned salesman. These people ensure that the online retail runs smoothly.
Regarding this, Ramappa claimed that, he has made the right career move as the e-commerce industry is growing rapidly. He is a leader for a team of over 40 employees who make sure that all the goods are picked, packed and shipped with clockwise precision in the Bengaluru warehouse of the retailer.
The e-commerce industry is expected to shoot up inIndiain the next five years and the sales are expected to reach around $43 billion. The advanced warehouses can eventually bring about success for the online retailers.
At Myntra, another popular fashion portal inIndia, the current capacity is over five lakh square feet and it is spread across five warehouses. Even Zivame is expecting to increase its storage from 12,000 square feet that exists currently.
It is fashion that is the fastest growing category when it comes to the online retail industry. For this category, both technology and storage are critical factors to achieve success. Regarding this, Partha Priya Datta, Associate Professor of Operations Management at IIM Calcutta claimed that warehouses are the backbone of e-commerce industry. It is noted that Amazon did not perform well as it had no warehouses, but now it has become their strength.
As per the Co-Founder of Myntra, Ashutosh Lawania, warehouses are virtually mapped out. He added that supply chain at the fashion portal uses technology to manage operations for inventory, customer care and payments.
While customer care executives can trace the shipment of an item, sellers can see how quickly their stock is selling on the portal. In the warehouse, it is software that dictates where the items should be dropped and the path that an employee should opt in to navigate the maze. Moreover, faster deliveries of ordered products is a must as the e-commerce portals lure in customers with huge discounts and schemes like same day deliveries.
Though Zivame and Myntra have capacious warehouses that will soon be expanded, they will surely pale in front of Amazon that has over 80 warehouses. Notably, some of these warehouses are large enough to hold 28 football stadiums.
