for a consumer costs too much if warehouses are situated on the outskirts of cities and for real estate cost reasons warehouses are often outside city limits additionally most cities in india have commercial transport restrictions ecommerce players can mitigate this by doing delivery from large modernformat stores based within city limits using the inventory in these stores as a means of fulfilling online orders is cost and timeefficient customers also have the option of placing orders online and taking physical delivery if they are in a hurry or if the store is conveniently located for them tesco and many other retailers in britain have a very successful omnichannel model tescos physical stores act as fulfilment centres for online purchases our flipkarts and snapdeals should look at this opportunity carefully combining online and offline shopping and therefore improving supplychain efficiencies is an idea worth exploring by indias newest breed of entrepreneurs done right this partnership will improve customer choice price and convenience and be a winwin for both online and offline retailers the writer is ceo bharti retail published on oct 23 2014 at 1131 am ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click on the submit button this will alert our moderators to take actions reasons for reporting foul language defamatory inciting hatred against a certain community out of context spam others report join the community of 2m industry professionals subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights analysis download etretail app get realtime updates save your favourite articles scan to download app samsung funding investments ecommerce strategy customer service brick and mortar retail battle homenewsonlineoffline retail an opportunity to collaborate and serve customers better