Amway India eyes 5x hike in home delivery, invest Rs 30 cr on supply chain

Direct selling major Amway India said it is looking to scale up home delivery orders by five times this year and will invest Rs 30 crore for strengthening its supply chain and automation

Direct selling major Amway India on Thursday said it is looking to scale up home delivery orders by five times this year and will invest Rs 30 crore for strengthening its supply chain and automation.

The company, which started integrating offline-to-online (O2O) earlier this year, said it has witnessed a significant shift to online sales from 33.6 per cent in February 2020 to over 70 per cent at present, and expects to clock up to 5-6 lakh home delivery orders per month by the end of this year.

"In the last few months, we have witnessed a rapid shift in consumer behaviour, especially in retail, with people increasingly migrating to online platforms for shopping. Amway too has observed a similar trend," Amway India CEO Anshu Budhraja said in a statement.

As web sales doubled, there has been a significant upward shift in home delivery orders, and the company expects this trend to continue, he added.

"To ensure seamless shopping experience and smooth last-mile delivery of orders, we are working towards strengthening our supply chain and logistics.

"We will be investing Rs 30 crore to enhance the home delivery experience by adding warehouse space, manpower, new logistics partners, automation in warehouses, and other back-end processes," Budhraja said.

Going forward, both offline and online platforms will form a key component of Amway India's future strategy with a tremendous focus online, guided by consumer trends and behavior, he said.

Sharing the company's experience with home deliveries, Amway India Vice President - Global Omni Channel Logistics Sanjeev Suri said, "Currently, we are doing over 2.8 lakh home deliveries, which is roughly 70 per cent to 80 per cent of our total sales, from 1 lakh home deliveries before March, accounting for 40 per cent of our total sales count."

This reflects a new world order where consumers demand everything at the click of a button. The trend is especially relevant with the Indian consumers embracing e-commerce, which is expected to grow 27 per cent to reach USD 99 billion by 2024, as per the latest report 'Global Internet: e-commerce's steepening curve' by Goldman Sachs, he added.

"To address this evolving trend, we are also planning to launch same-day delivery and online return services by the early next year, in Q1, to enhance the post-purchase experience," Suri said.

Amway India said currently it is working with a combination of 18 local and national delivery partners and plans to strengthen this network by adding some leading national logistic partners by the end of 2020.

"The company is now servicing 8,000 pin codes and aims to scale up to reach 15,000 pin codes by adding more national players and leveraging their network.

"Amway is also looking to add 40 per cent additional third-party manpower across India to support and fulfill the online demand," it added.