If they fail to pass the audit, sellers could be delisted or lose the Fassured badge (a quality and speed badge, given to select products) from the platform, the company said in an email to its sellers.
Flipkart aims to reduce returns by 10-15% in the next 12 months by enhancing quality of products and thereby increase sales. India’s largest ecommerce company — bought out earlier this month by Walmart for $16 billion — is looking to turn profitable in coming years.
While Flipkart did not disclose its return rate, the etailing industry has been grappling with high return rate leading to a significant loss in revenue for both marketplace and sellers.
RedSeer Consulting, which tracks the ecommerce sector closely, found the industry was dominated by high returns and cancellations with the difference between shipped and fulfilled gross merchandise value being as high as more than 30%. Fashion category has the highest cancellations and returns while mobile and appliances has the least. “We feel the industry needs to focus on ensuring the right products get delivered as 30% is good amount of revenue to be lost,” said a RedSeer report.
The programme is a part of the Bengaluru-based firms’ latest initiative, Flipkart Utkarsh, through which it intends to help sellers improve business by focusing on operations as well as quality of products being sold.