1. The project aimed to redesign Flipkart's Seller Protection Fund process to minimize payouts from the fund, which had been rising due to an increase in returns, fraudulent behavior, and operational inefficiencies. 2. Recommendations were made to reduce claims and payouts by changing seller policies, improving the claims process, and introducing new product features to enhance the seller experience. 3. Fraud detection engines and process changes were also suggested to curb different types of fraudulent behavior by sellers, buyers, and logistics in order to further reduce payouts from the protection fund.

1. Seller Protect Fund:
Process Revamp
Summer Internship Project Summary
Approved By:
Mr. Praveen Kumathalli
Director of Product
Seller Platform
Flipkart Internet Private
limited
Submitted By:
Suryaprakash Singh
1411198
IIM Bangalore

2. SELLER PROTECTION FUND: PROCESS REVAMPING
Executive Summary
The Seller Protection Program safeguards sellers from losses incurred due to
customer returns or courier returns received in an unacceptable state via
compensation from Seller Protection Fund (SPF), thus ensuring that the seller does
not get impacted. Furthermore, this program has been designed to safeguard the
sellers’ interests and make Flipkart a secure medium for sellers to conduct business.
Recently, the monthly payout due to SPF has been on the incremental rise because
of increase in number of returns, buyer/seller fraudulent behaviour, and operational
inefficiency in Logistics as well as in current manual Validation process. The project
revolves around redesigning the entire process end to end, thus minimizing the
payout as a result of Seller Protection Fund.
SPF payout is a function of the number of returns, claim rate, approval rate and net
payout ratio. During this project, each of these parameters was targeted and
analysed to reduce the overall SPF payouts. Firstly the recommendations were
made on the Seller Claim Policy side to minimize overall claim request as well as
SPF payout. Next, to bring in better seller and agent experience many product
feature recommendation were given. That will also help to reduce TAT for resolving
the claim request.
In this regard, the issues that the users were facing in raising claim request,
validation and reporting stage were identified and various short-term process
changes were suggested which will help in bringing down the approval rate to a
great extent. For a long term solution, different product asks identified and
recommended to improve the seller as well as Validation Consultant experience. For
tackling fraudulent behaviour from a seller/buyer/logistic and to control such kind
incidents, fraud and a validation engine recommendation were given on the basis of
various parameters. Different types of fraudulent behaviour in Return to
Origin/Reverse Pickup at customer, seller and platform level were identified with brief
modus operandi in each used case. Also change in product, process and policy
solves were suggested.
The compensation through the Seller Protection Fund is a major concern for Flipkart
since it has moved to Marketplace model. And as this amount would going to rise as
the number of sellers in the Flipkart marketplace will be increasing day by day. So
solving for a reduction in the payout through SPF is indispensable, and the
deliverables through this project will help in achieving it.