E-commerce giant Flipkart has entered into a strategic and commercial partnership with infrastructure company Adani Group to set up a data centre as well as a fulfilment centre, the company said in a statement today.
In this two-pronged partnership, Flipkart will work with Adani Logistics Ltd, a subsidiary of Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone Ltd and which provides end-to-end logistics services, to strengthen its supply chain infrastructure and enhance its ability to serve its rapidly growing base of customers.
Flipkart will set up its third data centre at AdaniConneX Pvt Ltd’s Chennai based facility, leveraging AdaniConneX’s data centre technology solutions, the company said.
AdaniConneX is a new joint venture between EdgeConneX and Adani Enterprises Ltd.
#News: Strengthening India’s logistics & data centre capabilities, @Flipkart and Adani Group come together to form strategic & commercial partnership.
The partnership will boost infrastructure for small businesses in the country. @AdaniOnline
Read more: https://t.co/boll7Dq3tA pic.twitter.com/So270Yf1ra
— Flipkart Stories (@FlipkartStories) April 12, 2021
As part of this partnership, Adani Logistics will construct a 534,000 sq.ft. fulfilment centre in its upcoming logistics hub in Mumbai that will be leased to Flipkart to address the growing demand for e-commerce in western India and support market access of several thousands of sellers and MSMEs in the region.
The centre is expected to be operational in third quarter of 2022 and will have the capacity to house 10 million units of sellers’ inventory at any point. In addition to strengthening Flipkart’s supply chain infrastructure to support MSMEs and sellers, the facility will also create 2,500 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs.
“These investments will help us strengthen our presence and capabilities in India to support MSMEs and sellers while also accelerating job creation and growth,” Flipkart Group Chief Executive Officer Kalyan Krishnamurthy said.
The partnership will also see Flipkart developing its third data centre at the AdaniConneX facility as a part of one of the largest private cloud deployments in the country, thereby further strengthening its growing marketplace e-commerce business in India.
The AdaniConneX data centre is a new facility to enable Flipkart to design the data centre to its growing infrastructure needs with a significant focus on security and keeping data locally within India.
“I am delighted to see two of India’s fastest-growing businesses come together to help build some of the most critical as well as state-of-the-art infrastructure that our nation needs. This is what Atmanirbharta should be all about. This broad-ranging partnership across our logistics and data centre businesses is a unique business model, and we see this as a great opportunity to serve Flipkart’s physical as well as digital infrastructure needs,” said Karan Adani, Chief Executive Officer at Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone.
Flipkart has been instrumental in defining e-commerce adoption in India, both through the value it creates and its constant technological innovation to serve its consumers. “We look forward to a long and fruitful partnership as we focus on learning from each other as well as leveraging our mutual strengths to prioritise consumers and development of India’s MSME ecosystem,” Adani added.
