E-commerce major Amazon India has opened six new fulfillment centres across five cities, as it prepares for a spike in demand in the upcoming festival season. Amazon’s fulfillment centres are essentially large warehouses, where sellers can send their products, which are packed, despatched and delivered to the customer by the company under its Fulfilled By Amazon service. The new centres are in Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai.

The move will allow Amazon to offer its Fulfilled By Amazon service to more small and medium businesses and enable faster delivery and easier returns. Over 80% of sellers on Amazon.in currently use its fulfillment services. It is also possible for sellers to learn about similar other Amazon tools, such as Brand Gating, through this guide for beginner sellers or other resources available online, and make the most of fulfillment as well as other services.

The six new centres add to Amazon’s 21 existing fulfilment centres across Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal, covering a total area of close to 2.5 million square feet.

Last month, Amazon.com Inc. announced an additional investment of $3 billion in India after the company exhausted its investment of $2 billion it made in July 2014. Currently, over 1.3 million products are available for immediate shipping through the network of Amazon’s fulfilment centres in India.

Amazon launched its India marketplace, Amazon Seller Services Pvt. Ltd, in June 2013 and has quickly expanded its product selection to become the biggest rival to the two large local sites Flipkart Ltd and Snapdeal.

Among other initiatives, the US-based e-commerce firm, early this year, also started Amazon Tatkal, a service-on-wheels to help small and medium businesses get online within 60 minutes.