Flipkart Wholesale expands to help revamp kiranas ahead of festive season

The e-commerce firm's digital B2B marketplace expands its network to 12 new cities with enabling digital commerce access to thousands of Kiranas and SMBs.

Flipkart Wholesale, the digital B2B marketplace of e-commerce giant Flipkart Group, has expanded its operations to 12 cities ahead of the festive season. It is looking to digitally transform kirana stores and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) to help them grow faster and improve their profitability.

Flipkart Wholesale will now be operational in Ghaziabad, Faridabad, and Mysuru. 

The other places include Chandigarh Tricity, Meerut, Agra, Jaipur and a few cities in Maharashtra. Adarsh Menon, senior vice-president and head of Flipkart Wholesale, said since the launch, the platform has partnered with several leading brands, and enabled ease of doing business digitally for small businesses and kirana stores. This is being done by helping them leverage insights from the Flipkart ecosystem to better understand customer demands specific to their area.

“From trendy Jaipuri Kurtis to evergreen Mysore silk saris, we aim to help small businesses embrace the digital transformation and emerge as more robust businesses,” said Menon. “We’re excited to see our initiative contributing to the prosperity of MSMEs, kiranas and creating lakhs of new and exciting livelihood opportunities in India.”

By the year’s end, Flipkart Wholesale also plans to expand into categories such as home and grocery.

Flipkart Wholesale customers will have access to easy credit facilities in partnership with leading banks and NBFCs (non-banking financial companies) to manage cash flow. The firm said the customers would also have access to a wide range of Flipkart assured quality products, simple and convenient order returns and speedy product delivery directly to their shops with an easy order tracking facility.

In July, Flipkart strengthened its wholesale presence with the acquisition of Walmart India, which operates the Best Price cash-and-carry business.