Shiprocket launches ‘Early COD’ feature for small businesses in India

Addressing one of the biggest challenges faced by small businesses in the eCommerce segment, Shiprocket – a new-age logistics aggregation platform that drives global and domestic shipping – has now launched its ‘Early COD’ feature in India. It will enable all Shiprocket sellers to receive COD remittance on a daily basis as compared to the industry norm of 10-15 days from the date of delivery.

Even as more customers continue to shift towards the digital domain, the spending habits of day-to-day consumers – especially the ones dwelling in tier II and tier III cities – have somehow remained the same. A RedSeer report indicates that COD payments are expected to be stagnant at 50% till at least 2020. COD remittance, however, is a labyrinthine process that includes cash collection, receipt collation, reconciliation of accounts, etc. with all processes adding their own technicalities and delays to the payment. The delayed COD payments nevertheless become a burden for small sellers, making them wait anywhere around 1 to 2 weeks from the delivery of a package. As a result, eCommerce sellers often have to turn towards formal and informal loans to unlock this locked-in capital.

Speaking on the announcement, Saahil Goel, Co-founder and CEO said: “Since its inception, Shiprocket has been dedicatedly working towards resolving the end-to-end challenges experienced by the Indian sellers. In this regard, one of the biggest complications is that of COD payments. This adds to their overall operational expenditure and considerably strains their finances. Earlier, Shiprocket minimized this problem to a great extent by conducting COD remittance thrice a week and now we are extremely delighted to launch ‘Early COD’, which will make the COD remittance possible in as less as one day. We would like to congratulate all of our sellers for the launch of Early COD and the value that it will create for them.”

This is the first time in India that sellers will receive COD remittance irrespective of the receipt of COD from the final courier. The Shiprocket sellers will receive guaranteed remittance based on the promised time (2,3,4 days after delivery) as per the different plans.