Amazon Fresh Expands Presence To 130 Cities

Amazon’s grocery delivery arm Amazon Fresh has expanded its services to 130 cities, including Ambala, Aurangabad, Hoshiarpur, Dharwad, Una, Suri, among others. This more than doubles the vertical’s presence from about 50 Indian cities last year. 

Amazon Fresh delivers groceries, including fruits, vegetables, chilled products, beauty, baby, personal care, and pet products. It claims to source these items from over 11,000 farmers and undertake a ‘4-step quality check’ to ensure quality of the produce.

“Our expansion and focus on quality products demonstrate our commitment to serve customers and offer them the best online shopping experience for fresh produce and daily essentials. Further, customers can avail benefits from cashback, offers, and bank discounts, adding value to their every purchase,” Amazon Fresh director Srikant Sree Ram said in a statement. 

The company claimed that its recent in-app launch of multiple thematic stores and events like mango store, summer store, IPL store etc., along with features like personalised widgets, buy again option, saved preferences, have helped it gain traction with consumers.

Last year, Ram said that over half of Amazon Fresh’s userbase comes from Tier-II and III cities. 

In the grocery delivery vertical, Amazon Fresh primarily competes with Flipkart, BigBasket and JioMart. Flipkart recently claimed that it clocked 1.6X year-on-year (YoY) growth in its grocery business in FY24.

Flipkart also said that it is eyeing Tier-II cities, including Aurangabad, Bokaro, Chhattarpur, Guwahati and Vizag, to deepen its presence. It also claimed that it is the only ecommerce company offering next-day grocery deliveries in more than 200 cities.

Meanwhile, Amazon Fresh claims to deliver groceries in 2 hours. However, quick commerce players like Zepto, Zomato-owned Blinkit, and Swiggy Instamart are competing with these ecommerce giants, delivering products in about 10 minutes.

Consequently, JioMart and Flipkart are also looking to enter the quick commerce segment. 

JioMart is likely to begin delivering groceries in select cities in under 30 minutes soon. The digital commerce arm of Reliance Retail is expected to roll out the quick commerce service in 7-8 cities in June, and has plans to increase these to 1,000 cities in the near future. 

On the other hand, BigBasket’s quick commerce arm, BBNow, has been operating for almost two years now. It claims to deliver groceries in 10 minutes to over 10 Mn customers. 

Meanwhile, Zepto, Blinkit, and Swiggy Instamart are also gearing up to expand their services. While Swiggy is looking to go for an IPO, Zomato is infusing $36 Mn in Blinkit. Zepto is said to be looking to raise a funding round to the tune of $650 Mn.