COVID-19: Flipkart temporarily suspends services

Walmart-owned Flipkart has temporarily suspended its operations in view of the 21-day nationwide lockdown due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

“We are temporarily suspending operations. Your needs have always been our priority and our promise is that we will be back to serve you, as soon as possible,” Flipkart said in a message on its website.

The e-comm firm further said to be assessing the possibilities of operating in the lockdown.

"We are prioritising the safety of our delivery executives and seeking the support of the local governments and police authorities to meet the needs of our customers as they stay home during this lockdown," said Rajneesh Kumar, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Flipkart in a statement.

All sellers services have been suspended, still, users can pay mobile bills and utility bills using Flipkart’s app.

No details are available on when operations will be restored. The e-commerce company further urged people to stay home to stay safe.

Meanwhile, Amazon India has also announced temporarily halting the sale of all non-essential products.

"...we are temporarily prioritizing our available fulfilment and logistics capacity to serve products that are currently critical for our customers such as Household Staples, Packaged Food, Health Care, Hygiene, Personal safety and other high priority products. This also means that we have to temporarily stop taking orders and disable shipments for lower-priority products," the company said in a blog post.

"For all pending customer orders on lower-priority products, we are reaching out to customers and giving them a choice to cancel their orders, and receive a refund for prepaid items," it added.

Besides, grocery firms BigBasket and Grofers have also halted their operations until further notification.

Latest data available shows India has over 500 coronavirus cases with  10 dead. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had placed the entire country in lockdown for 21 days.

Update: The post has been updated with Flipkart statement.