With less than a month left for India’s festive season sale to begin, Amazon India—the Indian arm of US-headquartered online behemoth—is working on increasing its delivery network across the country to ensure smooth and faster delivery of products.
Amazon India has doubled its network of delivery partners with over 1,400 stations—a collection and distribution point from where products are sent to different pin codes—spread across 750 cities to ensure it has direct delivery presence is smaller cities as well. Till last year, it was able to directly handle deliveries in 500 Indian cities.
“We are seeing a lot of adoption and that’s why we are building these services. We are continuing to build service offerings to give better customer experience,” Akhil Saxena, vice president of customer fulfilment at Amazon India, told Mint, a local newspaper.
According to a market research firm, RedSeer Management Consulting, Indian online retailers sold products worth USD 2.5 billion last year during the five-day festive season sale.
When Amazon started in India in 2012, it guaranteed both two-day and one-day delivery services, which later on got shortened to same-day and sub-same-day—although at an added price. For Prime Now members Amazon provides two-hour deliveries as well for selected products.
One of the reasons it’s increasing its direct delivery capacity is because of the 2X growth it has seen in states such as south Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Eastern states of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal, as well as in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat—central and western Indian states.
Earlier this year, Amazon India launched a flexi-job program—offering students, homemakers, and retired professionals part-time jobs to deliver products ensuring faster deliveries during peak season. It has expanded the program to seven cities from three.
Amazon India is also using the festive period as a launchpad to enter into food-delivery segment. It is reportedly offering a commission of 6-7% to restaurants for delivering food, which is less than half compared to 15-17% charged by its competitors such as Swiggy and Zomato.