Flipkart plans to invest $2.5 bn for expansion

Hyderabad, Oct 30 : India's biggest e-commerce company Flipkart plans to invest $2 billion in logistics and another $500 million in a nationwide warehouse network over the next four to five years, co-founder and COO Binny Bansal said on Friday.

The company, which opened its largest fulfilment centre here, is looking at opening 80 to 100 warehouses across the country.

Bansal told reporters that they will explore raising funds through IPO and private investors in addition from their own accruals.

Telangana Finance Minister E. Rajender inaugurated Flipkart's largest fulfilment centre in the country at Gundla Pochampally on the city outskirts in the presence of Bansal.

Spread over 2.2 lakh square feet and with a storage capacity of 5.89 lakh cubic feet, this is Flipkart's 17th warehouse in the country.

The automated state-of-the-art fulfilment centre is expected to ship out 1.2 lakh items every day.

Bansal said the warehouse was designed to provide easy access to e-commerce services for sellers, while providing faster and seamless services to customers.

Equipped with a one-km-long conveyer belt, which is expected to reduce motion wastage by 75 percent, the centre has automated sorters to separate shipments based on pin codes.

With 50 million products, Flipkart has 45 million registered users logging over 10 million daily shipments.