Snapdeal, Tradus roll out same-day delivery option without any extra charges

After a string of etailers like Amazon, Flipkart, Jabong and Myntra offered 24-hour delivery for products sold on their site, now it's the turn of other Indian marketplaces like Snapdeal and Tradus which have also launched their own same-day delivery option.

Snapdeal's express delivery option (check image) is currently active in Delhi and Gurgaon only but without an extra charge. So if buyers place an order before 1 pm they are entitled to receive their orders the same day. As of now some selected products are available under the service and the products are marked so to be identifiable by the buyers. Apparently the products that are available under the service will have a yellow tag on the page.

Tradus, on the other hand, has launched same-day delivery on only mobiles and tablets at no additional charges. The usual payment options like COD, EMIs, debit/credit card payments are applicable on the new service as well. Tradus is offering the service in Delhi-NCR as of now and will extend it to Mumbai and Bangalore soon.

Besides the express delivery option without any extra charge (at least as of now, as against others who offer it with a small fee), the option by Snapdeal and Tradus is also interesting as they are pure marketplaces.

Indeed, almost all of the prominent etailers offering such a special delivery option also have their own logistics operation be it Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra or Jabong. For firms like Snapdeal this becomes a tricky situation as it would have to depend on third-party logistics partners for same-day delivery.

Moreover, all vendors on Snapdeal are third-party sellers against most of the other firms (barring Amazon) which also have their own (or group firm) products to sell, giving more control of the inventory to ship.

The two firms have a lot of issues to manage at the back end to ensure they can match up to the promise of same-day delivery. We have contacted the two firms to get more details of the mechanics of the new delivery option and will update as and when we receive comments from them.

Flipkart, that launched a similar service last month, promises to deliver the product the next day and charges the customer an additional Rs 90 for the service. It has launched the service in Delhi, Noida, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad in the first phase and will extend to other cities soon. Although Flipkart is charging additional fee for the service, its differentiator is that its service is available on all the products it houses and not on any selected merchandise or category.

Earlier, Amazon announced such express delivery services for orders fulfilled through its own network. It charges Rs 99 for same day delivery, Rs 79 for two-day delivery and so on though it's offering some discounts for a limited period.

Bangalore-based horizontal etailer Myntra had also started a pilot of offering an instant delivery option in its home city. In an earlier interaction with Techcircle.in, Mukesh Bansal, CEO, Myntra.com stated that the firm also experimented with one-hour delivery in Bangalore recently. Going forward it wants to offer 4-6-24-hour delivery options in various cities.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)