Amidst the coronavirus crisis and lockdown, the two top Indian e-commerce platforms Flipkart and Amazon India have temporarily suspended operations. The central government of India declared complete lockdown of the country for 21 days. During this period flights have also been suspended. And in this crisis, Amazon India has stopped taking new orders in order to prioritize supplying customers with only essential goods. These goods include household staples, packaged food, healthcare, hygiene, personal safety and other high priority products.
Amazon has declared that it has stopped taking order for low-priority orders, and disabled shipments of such products as well. The company is set to reach out to the customers who have pending shipments of low priority orders during lockdown. “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”, said Amazon India. Amazon has mentioned that this is in effect from March 24 and will continue until the government issues fresh orders.
Flipkart on the other hand has suspended all its delivery services for the time being. Flipkart has not mentioned how long this suspension will last. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to the country on Tuesday initiating a full lockdown of the country from midnight. The government has mentioned that all essential services will be kept running. Hence people need not panic about running out of essentials during this lockdown period.
Coronavirus in India: Lockdown initiated
The Coronavirus disease, also known as COVID-19 has so far rattled over 110 countries across the world. The WHO declared pandemic has resulted in over 2,50,600 cases so far and over 10,250 deaths globally. In India, the virus has so far claimed 9 lives and has a total of 512 confirmed cases. 95 of the total cases in India are from Kerala, which is now the worst-hit state. The country is now under a lockdown for 21 days.
