A delivery truck enters or exits fulfilment centres in Bhiwandi almost every 30 seconds.

The ecommerce space in the city gives a means of livelihood to close to 3.5 lakh people.

“When we signed lease for a 400,000 sq ft warehouse, we found the place had 57 owners. All of them came down for documentation. This can happen only in Bhiwandi” : Ashish Shah founder & COO, Pepperfry

The road from Mumbai to Nashik cuts through swathes of green pastures. About 30 km into the journey comes the city of Bhiwandi , and then the scenery begins to change. On the right side of the road, the greenery gets punctuated by buildings spread across the landscape wearing the unmistakable look of warehouses — large premises, conical tin sheds and doorways big enough to accommodate heavy commercial vehicles.On the left side of the road are more warehouses. Only, these are taller, younger-looking buildings stacked against each other in a queue that goes on for several kilometres. In place of decrepit tin sheds, these have steel claddings often seen on industrial buildings internationally. Pucca roads replace the pastures on this side of the city.These newfangled warehouses have come up in Bhiwandi — known for its century-old power looms industry which still exists in the interiors of the city — only in the last five years or so. Here, online retail companies such as Amazon, Flipkart , Nykaa, Pepperfry, Grofers and Bigbasket , among others, store their goods in what the industry calls fulfilment centres or FCs. When a customer places an order on one of these online platforms, the item ordered is packed in these FCs, sorted according to the delivery location and dispatched in a delivery vehicle for its final destination. Third-party logistics companies (called 3PLs) such as DHL, Blue Dart , DTDC, Safexpress — the entities that deliver these goods to the customers’ doorsteps — also have their own FCs here. Like a local train on a busy Mumbai station, a delivery truck enters and exits these centres every 30 seconds.Online retailers and 3PLs take warehouses like these on lease to avoid large investments required to establish one. In fact, most ecommerce companies tend to lease all logistics services to keep the cost low while delivering efficiently across the country. According to a recent KPMG report, 51% of all ecommerce deliveries were executed by external logistics service providers (LSPs). India’s e-commerce retail logistics market, it said, was valued at $1.35 billion in 2018 and was projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 36% in the next five years.At the heart of this growth lies Bhiwandi, the logistics haven from where ecommerce companies manage deliveries for the entire western region — roughly 30-35% of all online retail sales across players and categories.Though there are similar warehousing clusters in Gurgaon, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, it is Bhiwandi, northeast of Mumbai, that is becoming the flag-bearer of the booming logistics business. Why? Because the city has evolved into a first-of-its-kind ecommerce logistics hub in India. Here, a broker is readily available to facilitate an ecommerce player’s logistics needs at every step — from their warehouse to the customer’s house. These include land-leasing services; management of warehouses; manpower supply for packing, sorting, loading and unloading of goods, trucks and truck drivers to ferry those goods; security and catering staff, among other things. Hundreds of them help ecommerce companies serve customers in states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat and Goa. To put it succinctly, Bhiwandi is like a supermarket for ecommerce players.The city’s journey to becoming a hub for FCs started a while ago, says Rajesh Thakker, 57, director of Jai Bhagwan Realties, which has developed and leased 40 acres in Bhiwandi to seven brands, including Amazon and Grofers. “Builders began developing warehouses in this textile industry hub around the 1970s. At the start of the 21st century, retailers like Big Bazaar and DMart set up warehouses in the city. It was only natural for ecommerce companies to follow suit a decade later.” Soon, new and international-standard warehouses began to emerge on the other side of Bhiwandi’s old-fashioned godowns.The business has grown at warp speed for key stakeholders in this gig — builders, property dealers, staffing companies and the local workforce, among others. The increasing demand for more warehousing space has led to a 150% jump in land prices in the last 10 years. According to a recent Knight Frank’s India Warehousing Market Report, in 2017, the warehousing transaction volumes in Bhiwandi recorded a 230% yearon-year growth over 2016.Around 5 million sq ft of warehousing space has so far been absorbed into building warehousing parks in 2019 alone, says Jasmine Singh, country head of industrial & logistics services at CBRE, a commercial real estate services company.With nearly 25 million sq ft of legal warehousing space, Bhiwandi is neck-and-neck with Delhi-NCR that offers not one but two large warehousing clusters around Ghaziabad and National Highway-48.However, Bhiwandi has its own set of challenges. During monsoon, the city makes headlines for fatalities due to infrastructure failure. Instances of illegal acquisition of agricultural land to build warehouses are not uncommon either. But there are at least a couple of good reasons that have put Bhiwandi a notch above other suitable locations, say stakeholders.The rentals here are cheaper than many industrial hubs in the country — Rs 11-20 per sq ft a month against Rs 14-22 for the Ghaziabad cluster and Rs 14-24 in Chennai. In the unorganised sector, word is that you can get a rate as low as Rs 9 per sq ft a month in Bhiwandi. “It is because of such competitive rates that most ecommerce companies have their largest warehousing hub in this area,” says Dhiren Shah, 43, a Mumbai-based realty broker.In 2012, companies like Pepperfry started setting up bigger FCs in the city. Since 2014, Amazon has set up seven such centres in Bhiwandi — the highest number across its major warehousing hubs in India. Location is another factor as Bhiwandi is not too far from Mumbai and is well connected to the thoroughfares in the region. Another important factor — perhaps the clincher — is labour.Ashish Shah, founder & COO of Pepperfry explains why ecommerce companies prefer Bhiwandi even though labour costs are higher here. "Even the infrastructure is much better in cities like Bengaluru. However, the high work ethic, a no-nonsense attitude, and the credibility of the Bhiwandi workforce make it our No. 1 warehousing location," he says.Pepperfry's warehousing space in the area has grown from 8,000 sq ft to 400,000 sq ft over the past seven years. "When we signed the lease for our 400,000 sq ft warehouse here, we found that the facility has 57 owners. All of them came down for documentation. This can happen only in Bhiwandi," Shah says. Even workforce strikes are fewer here compared with most other warehousing hubs, he adds."During peak season, poaching of labour between Amazon and Flipkart happens quite often. But you don't hear cases of data theft and such. People in Bhiwandi have a reputation to maintain," says Sumit Patil, 34, director at Trident Human Resource Management, a staffing company that manages labour and logistics duties for clients like Flipkart, Bigbasket and Nykaa, among others.The ecommerce space in the city gives a means of livelihood to close to 3.5 lakh people from the area and nearby towns.Realty dealer Dhiren owns one-fourth of a 12,000 sq ft warehousing space with three other property dealers in the area. "There are no walls within the building so we can easily make room for bigger clients. But if required, we can separate the space using makeshift partitions." This flexibility has helped Bhiwandi fare better than other logistics hubs.Bhiwandi also scores high on Amazon's charts for its people's entrepreneurial instincts, an Amazon spokesperson tells ET Magazine. "We do a lot of community engagement programmes in areas like education, health, sanitation and women empowerment across 15 warehousing centres in India. Some of the beneficiaries of these initiatives from Bhiwandi saw an opportunity in using their training to provide ancillary services at our FCs. This helped them earn a livelihood and become financially independent," the spokesperson adds.Ganga Sonavale, popularly known as "Ganga tai", is one such beneficiary. Seeing her penchant for business during a self-help group training, Amazon's CSR unit asked if she would like to run a canteen at its FCs in the city. "I seized the opportunity with both hands," says the 35-year-old resident of Vahuli village in Bhiwandi. She started with serving 20 meals four months ago. Today, she serves close to 500 meals across four Amazon FCs in the region, earning over Rs 7,000 a month.While the power looms largely employ skilled labour, the ecommerce gig has given avenues to unskilled labour, says Jai Bhagwan's Thakker. It has changed the lives of people like Sonavale. "Before the catering business, I was just a housewife. My role as a housewife is very important, but it doesn't give any financial returns and respect in society. Now I am considered a financially independent woman in my village. Younger women come to me for advice." She now wants more women to join her business so that she can expand further.If Bhiwandi's warehousing hub were a people, Pepperfry's Shah says he would describe them as "the people for all seasons". "Others are either too new (Bengaluru) or too plastic (Gurgaon)," he says. "They lack character. Bhiwandi, on the other hand, is an old hand. It has a lot of stories to tell."