After the Indian government announced a complete lockdown, Indian online stores were forced to stop selling items. Some of these were operating but only to sell essential items in selected locations. Now it is confirmed that these online stores will be back to work starting April 20.
India extended lockdown to May 3 but relaxed some restrictions on a few industries including e-commerce. So, All e-commerce stores including Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm Mall, and Snapdeal will start selling non-essential items.
The statement issued by the government reads, “Digital economy is critical to the services sector and is important for national growth. Accordingly, e-commerce operations, operations of IT and IT-enabled services, data and call centers for Government activities, and online teaching and distance learning are all permitted activities now.”
As per reports, the lockdown has cost e-commerce companies more Han a billion-dollar in the loss in the last three weeks. Several other companies that earn from the affiliate earnings of these stores also faced a huge loss.
Even if these e-commerce stores will resume their operations, you shouldn’t expect speedy delivery from their side. Most e-commerce stores already have pending orders made before the lockdown imposed. They will first process their pending orders before taking any new orders.
Flipkart has already started working with sellers to prepare them for safe packaging and delivery. The same goes with Amazon. These companies will have to ensure that their operations don’t expose customers or delivery partner to COVID-19 infection.
The new relaxation will let people order items such as clothes, electronics, mobile phones and other items they couldn’t order during lockdown till date.
