Flipkart has decided to embrace latest technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to strengthen its business practices. The Indian e-tailer has seen some remarkable turnaround in its fortunes since it launched the Big Billion Day (BBD) sale and claimed to have beaten Amazon to it. It cannot be denied that Flipkart is giving Amazon a tough fight in the online retail business space in India.
Now Flipkart wants to build on this success and has created a separate unit within its organization, called AIforIndia, which will focus on the development and application of AI and ML in resolving any major or minor issues in its operations, from the supply end till the delivery end.
The founders of Flipkart have indicated that they expect to invest “hundreds of millions of dollars” into this initiative and will even, going forward, make acquisitions in this space, where suitable targets are identified, to add to the F7 Labs it already has in its armory, acquired in 2015 from the Silicon Valley.
How serious the company is, can be further gauged by the fact that Flipkart has already gone ahead and hired a lot of AI specialists and is in the process of forging partnerships with top educational institutions like IITs for this purpose. It is not sparing any efforts at building the necessary infrastructure also for the AIforIndia project. The project itself will be overseen by senior executives with Mayur Datar, Chief Data Scientist as its Head.
Flipkart co-founder, Sachin Bansal has admitted that the e-commerce models followed in some of the developed economies cannot be duplicated in India since our country throws up certain unique issues which can only be taken care by studying them in-depth and coming up with the solutions. That is exactly what this AI and ML based project will attempt to do. As mentioned, there will be a review of the current difficulties being faced right from the procurement, inventory management, deliveries and customer support and relationships and how the use of AI can offer the solutions for each of these areas.