Amid the coronavirus pandemic that has been raising global concerns, every place of work is closing down while people have been self-isolating, in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus. Several e-commerce giants have temporarily suspended their services, and Flipkart is one of them. Amazon has restricted its services to delivering high-priority items alone.

An official statement from Flipkart read, "Hello fellow Indians, We are temporarily suspending operations. Your needs have always been our priority and our promise is that we will be back to serve you, as soon as possible." Amazon has chosen to deliver only specific products and shall make a full refund to customers who ordered other items before the announcement was made. "These changes are in effect from 24th March 2020, and we will update when we resume normal operations. We will follow all Centre and State Government guidance on this. We continue to work with concerned government authorities to ensure on-ground support that will enable us to offer a more expanded selection to fulfill customer needs."

The statement further read, "We are seeing an increased demand for priority products and important services. To serve our customers' most urgent needs while also ensuring the safety of our employees, we are temporarily prioritizing our available fulfilment and logistics capacity to serve products that are currently critical for our customers such as household staples, packaged food, health care, hygiene, personal safety and other high priority products."

PM Narendra Modi imposed a nationwide lockdown that came into effect on March 25 at 12.00 am and will be enforced for 21 days. Banks, ATMs, grocery stores, hospitals, pharmacies, and petrol pumps will continue to operate during this period.