Amazon Unifies Entire Grocery Business; Pantry Is Now A Part Of Amazon Fresh

In February 2021, Amazon had announced its intention to integrate its Pantry services within the Amazon Fresh store in India. The integrated single website has finally gone live on the ecommerce app.

Until now, Amazon’s Pantry and Fresh businesses were two separate sections within the app and website. Pantry encompassed mostly dry groceries, bulk-buy items, and super-saver packs. Fresh, on the other hand, daily groceries, perishables, and household products within two hours.

The company said that the new version will be available directly on the home screen of the app/website and will provide an upgraded shopping experience and a dedicated app-in-app for grocery shopping. It will also have features like personalised widgets and reminders to ensure that frequently shopped items aren’t forgotten during checkout.

The two-hour delivery feature will be available in 14 cities only.

Initially, the new experience was slated to roll out to customers in the locations where Amazon Fresh was serviceable, and in the rest locations, Amazon Pantry would operate as usual. Through the nationwide rollout, the ecommerce customers from 300+ cities will now be able to order groceries and perishables via the unified “Amazon Fresh”.

The company launched Amazon Pantry in July 2016, replicating online, the supermarket (offline) model of Future Group’s Big Bazaar, Dmart, Reliance Fresh, More and Spencer’s among other modern trades. In 2019, Amazon Fresh, on the other hand, aimed to mimic the success of hyperlocal grocery platforms such as Tata-backed BigBasket, Grofers, among others.

And now, even as it is embroiled in a major controversy with the Reliance-Future Group deal, Amazon is looking to streamline both parts of the business. Thus, combining the two, the single grocery delivery platform will offer customers the option to choose two-hour delivery in multiple slots from 6 AM to midnight.

Amazon’s arch-rival Walmart-owned Flipkart introduced Flipkart Quick in 2020. The company ran a pilot in Bengaluru and now offers services across Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Hyderabad, Pune, Lucknow and Mangaluru. It provides a 90-minute delivery service across groceries, mobile phones and electronics and home accessories.

Currently, as far as infrastructure goes, Amazon India has 60+ fulfilment centres, with increased storage capacity by 40%, in 15 states. Besides, it has 28K+ neighbourhood Kirana partners in 420+ cities to provide grocery delivery services.