Snapdeal to invest in logistics to speed up delivery

Shopping online is becoming more popular in India due to the rising use of cheaper smartphones and ecommerce firms are struggling to cope with the growing demand and make faster deliveries in different parts of the country, thefiscaltimes.com reports.

The ecommerce market in India is expected to grow to USD 220 billion in the value of goods sold by 2025, up from an expected USD 11 billion this year, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a recent report, the source cites.

One area Snapdeal will focus on is to cut delivery times by investing in better data analytics and demand forecasting, co-founder Rohit Bansal told Reuters, the source cites. We have done over 10 acquisitions and investments in the last one year, almost all of them in the field of technology or supply chain and payments, he said. With all these investments we have been able to reduce our delivery times by 70 percent in the last one year.

Snapdeal, which had USD 4.5 billion in Gross Merchandise Volumes (GMV), a measure of value of goods and services sold, by August 2015, bought mobile wallet company FreeCharge in April for around USD 400 million. It has also spent around USD 35 million to buy about 50% stake in logistics services company GoJavas.