Bengaluru: Amazon India is leaning on a grocery supply chain built over years to power an aggressive quick commerce expansion, as the company races to narrow the gap with the earlier entrants.
The e-commerce giant plans to expand Amazon Now to 100 cities through a network of over 1,000 micro-fulfilment centres (MFCs) in the coming months, up nearly three times the current level, while continuing to grow Amazon Fresh in smaller cities where scheduled grocery deliveries remain popular, Srikant Sree Ram, director of Amazon Fresh, told Mint. Amazon Now currently services 20 cities.
“We want to get to 1,000 micro-fulfilment centres across 100 cities in a matter of months. But to achieve those numbers, we have to build the backend in parallel. The supply chain and infrastructure have to scale alongside the front end,” Ram said.
Amazon is, however, not positioning Amazon Now as a replacement for Fresh. The two services serve distinct shopping missions and will continue to be built in parallel. While quick commerce caters to impulse and immediate-need purchases such as snacks, beverages and ice cream, Amazon Fresh remains focused on planned grocery shopping, larger baskets and a wider assortment.
Amazon Fresh offers deliveries within scheduled timeslots often the next day, while Now delivers within minutes, in line with other quick commerce players.
“Both services will co-exist. They serve different customer needs,” Ram said. “On Fresh, you might find five varieties of ice cream. On a minute service like Amazon Now, you’ll probably find 25 varieties. On the other hand, something like rice might have a much wider assortment on Fresh because customers are making more planned purchases.”
The move reflects Amazon’s belief that the sourcing, fulfillment and cold-chain infrastructure built for Fresh can accelerate Amazon Now’s expansion. While the two services share a large part of the same backend network, Amazon continues to build dedicated front-end infrastructure, including micro-fulfilment centres and last-mile delivery capabilities, as they operate on different delivery models.
For Amazon, the challenge is acute. While rivals such as Eternal-owned Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, IPO-bound Zepto and Tata-backed BigBasket continue to build dense hyperlocal networks, Amazon entered quick commerce much later, and is relying on Fresh’s farmer network, collection centres and processing facilities to speed up its expansion.
In 2025, Blinkit was the market leader with a 47% share, followed by Zepto at 24%, Instamart at 22%, and others (Flipkart Minutes, Amazon Now, BigBasket, etc) collectively owned 7%, per estimates by market research firm Datum Intelligence.
Amazon Now has grown from a single MFC in January 2025 to more than 350 today, while Amazon Fresh has expanded from around 200 cities to over 300 cities during the same period, according to the company. Orders on Amazon Now are growing about 25% month-on-month, while Amazon is opening roughly two new MFCs every day as part of the expansion.
Built on Fresh
At Amazon, fresh produce moves through a common network of farmers, collection centres, processing facilities, and quality systems before entering the company’s fulfilment network. For Amazon Now, the infrastructure is supplemented by micro-fulfillment centres located close to customer clusters to enable rapid delivery.
The company has been able to increase volumes using existing sourcing relationships and processing assets rather than building an entirely new sourcing ecosystem.
“This is a business where scale helps,” Karan Chugh, director of operations at Amazon India, said. “All of this was built for Fresh already. We had the foundation and then had to build on top of that – reusing and scaling up existing assets.”
While sourcing and processing are shared, the two businesses diverge at the fulfilment stage. Amazon Now relies on MFCs located close to customer clusters, while Fresh continues to operate through a scheduled-delivery model.
Chugh said the pace of infrastructure creation has accelerated sharply as Amazon scales its quick commerce ambitions. Referring to a processing facility near Pune, he noted that the site did not exist a year ago and became operational only in recent months. “That is the pace at which we are building out facilities, which will eventually be the foundation of how we are able to serve consumers,” he said.
Amazon works with more than 16,000 farmers and aggregators, up from about 6,000 four years ago. It also plans to add about 18 collection centres, including across Maharashtra, where it currently operates 10.
Around 70-80% of produce sold on the platform is sourced directly, while nearly 70% is sourced within 200 km of where it is eventually delivered, the executives said.
Can the model scale?
Whether that supply-chain depth can help Amazon catch up in quick commerce is still being debated.
Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail consultancy The Knowledge Company, said fresh produce remains one of the most difficult categories to manage consistently in Indian retail, regardless of whether sales happen online or offline.
“Fresh is something nobody in India has been able to crack,” Singhal said, adding that fragmented farming, varying consumer preferences across regions and quality-control challenges make scaling fresh produce operations significantly harder than selling packaged goods.
At the same time, Singhal broadly agrees with Amazon’s argument that backend capability could matter more than headline delivery speeds over the long term. “Speed cannot be the only advantage in quick commerce,” he said. “If you can build confidence with consumers through supply-chain quality and sorting, I don’t see a reason why they cannot succeed.”
That debate is likely to become increasingly important as quick commerce matures. While speed remains a powerful customer acquisition tool, operators are increasingly being judged on assortment, product quality and profitability, Singhal said.
Amazon argues those strengths stem from years of operating Fresh, pointing to a common sourcing backbone, temperature-controlled infrastructure and long-standing farmer relationships as assets that can be reused as quick commerce expands.
“We don’t really obsess about what competitors do. We obsess about what consumers get as alternatives and how we can get better at it,” Ram said.
(Disclaimer: The reporter was at Amazon India’s facilities near Pune for reporting at the invitation of the company.)