After Snapdeal & Tradus, eBay rolls out same-day delivery option without any extra charges

A string of etailers like Amazon, Flipkart, Jabong and Myntra are already offering 24-hour delivery for products sold on their site. In addition, early last week, Indian marketplaces like Snapdeal and Tradus had also launched their own same-day delivery option (read here for more). Joining the bandwagon now is another leading marketplace eBay India, a 100 per cent subsidiary of eBay Inc. The company has announced the first phase launch of its '9 hour delivery' service.

Currently available only in Mumbai, the service will offer delivery of selected technology products within 9 hours of them being purchased on eBay India. A special microsite has also been curated by the company, which features products offered under this service. The service is available across product categories like mobiles (HTC Desire, Nokia Lumia 520, etc.), laptops (Acer Aspire & Dell Inspiron, etc.), digital cameras (Nikon Coolpix & DSLR cameras) and tablets (Apple iPads).

"The 9 hour delivery concept gives consumers a faster and improved shopping experience. This is the first phase of the service, which is available to our Mumbai customers on popular technology product categories and will be scaled to key cities in India in a span of few months," said Vidmay Naini, business head – technology, PaisaPay and PowerShip, eBay India.

Note that under the service, products ordered before 12 noon will be delivered before 9pm on the same day. Purchases made post 12 noon will be delivered the next day. Also, as of now, there are no additional shipping charges or fees levied on this service.

In comparison, Snapdeal's express delivery option is also available free of cost, but only in Delhi and Gurgaon as of now. So if buyers place an order before 1 pm they are entitled to receive their orders the same day. A few selected products are available under the service and the products are marked so to be identifiable by the buyers. 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 but will extend it to Mumbai and Bangalore soon.

Flipkart had launched a similar service last month that promises to deliver the product the next day, but for additional cost of Rs 90. 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 also offering discounts on the same 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.