A swanky building just off OMR is bustling with activity. Legions of men in uniform are constantly pouring in with huge bags on their backs and sheaves of papers in their hands; several take off on bikes, and there are vans and lorries queuing up to handle bulk shipments at E-kart logistics, a company that delivers Flipkart products.

These men are part of the e-tail army, the ones who zoom around the city on their two-wheelers, the ones who convert the few clicks from your laptop or mobile app to a product in your hands.

“We individually handle 40-50 deliveries a day. Around festival time, the number shoots to 70 and upwards,” say Ganesh and Mani, as they share and wolf down lunch from a stainless steel container. “Our shift starts as early as 7.30 am. Based on the orders, we split the routes and go about deliveries,” says Ganesh, rushing off to pick up his next consignment from the office after his brief lunch.

Ganesh is a field executive who drives a two-wheeler, while Mani drives a van. When orders are placed in bulk by companies, vans go out to deliver consignments, Mani informs.

Madhan is part of a team that does only one thing — reverse deliveries. That’s right, there are dedicated teams to pick up goods that are faulty, or those that don’t match the consumer’s specifications. “We get calls to pick up and return products for a plethora of reasons — the colour is different, the photo of the product shown on the web site is different and so on. We check it and take back the product,” says the lanky, soft-spoken 20-something.

“Sometimes, real mess-ups happen. Customers who returned the product get the same kind of product even the second time. That’s when we really face the music. But whatever happens, we stay calm,” he adds.

The executives are trained on how to speak to customers and are given firm instructions — no executive is supposed to call up a customer more than two times to check for an address. And the newbies are told to tag along with the more experienced ones for about 10 days to learn the ropes.

The number of products returned or exchanged, though, seems to be a touchy topic, with a source requesting anonymity while informing that if there are about 500 deliveries a day, about 80 of them — about 16 per cent of the customers — call back for a new product or to return them.

But Manigandan, Area Manager, says that they usually handle about 2,000 deliveries a day, but due to ‘Diwali spike’, they are now delivering 3,500 to 4,000 products a day. And that’s just from one hub alone. E-kart operates from seven branches in the city, so that works out to a whopping 14,000 deliveries in the city on normal days and double that during the festive season. Manigandan says that certain areas are ordering hotspots, such as those near SRM university in Kattankalathur and RMZ Millenia Tech Park in Taramani.

Coming back two or three times to deliver for customers who are not at a specified address, getting lost and driving through pothole ridden roads and even walking down lanes where bikes are too narrow to even enter, these delivery men accomplish what is no mean feat — 70-80 deliveries a day during festival season works out to a lightning fast 10 every hour, or 1.6 deliveries every minute. Mind boggling, ain’t it?

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> TamilNadu / by Varun B. Krishnan / October 13th, 2014