E-commerce is eyeing the Northeast. Tough terrain, big rewards await.
The Northeast is becoming a key e-commerce market in India, with Amazon and Flipkart expanding operations to meet rising demand. Investments in infrastructure aim to enhance delivery efficiency despite challenges like geography and climate risks, as online shopping trends evolve in the region.
Once written off as too remote and costly to serve, the Northeast is emerging as India’s newest e-commerce consumption frontier. With most market leaders having saturated the high-demand, easy-to-serve markets, large online retailers are testing whether rising consumption and improving connectivity can turn the region into a meaningful growth driver, as they race to cut losses.
Amazon has doubled down on faster deliveries in Assam, focusing on same-day and next-day deliveries, and has added “a new fulfilment centre, one sortation centre, and more than 50 delivery stations," Saurabh Srivastava, vice president at Amazon India told Mint.
“These investments have enabled Amazon to deliver more than 2x more products (year-on-year), same and next day to customers in Guwahati," he added. The company counts over 10,000 sellers from Assam on its marketplace, reflecting deeper integration of the region into its nationwide network.
Amazon’s rival, Flipkart says the Northeast remains one of its fastest-growing regions, witnessing 35–40% year-on-year growth, said Rajneesh Kumar, chief corporate affairs officer at Flipkart Group.
To meet demand, the Walmart-owned company has built over 6 lakh sq ft of warehousing across Guwahati and Agartala, supported by 391 delivery hubs, “which is very much in line with the size of warehouses in larger cities like NCR (the National Capital Region of Delhi and surrounding areas incuding Gurgaon, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad), the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Bengaluru and Hyderabad," said said Prashant Gupta, partner at Kearney, a management consulting firm.
Flipkart's new grocery fulfilment centre in Agartala handles over 5,000 daily orders across Tripura, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland. Kumar said more than 1 lakh sellers from Assam are active on the Flipkart marketplace.
Kumar said Flipkart is also pushing its quick commerce arm, Flipkart Minutes, in the Northeast, with nine micro-fulfilment centres in Guwahati, adding that they now deliver “essentials, electronics, lifestyle products and regional selections".
Quick commerce major Blinkit entered Guwahati in January this year, opening a warehouse on Zoo Road and added another in Chandmari. Swiggy remains active in food delivery across select cities in the Northeast, though its Instamart grocery service is yet to scale in the region and the company has not shared details on its infrastructure. Zepto, in contrast, has stayed out of the Northeast so far, confirming to Mint that it does not operate there. Queries sent to Zomato on Blinkit and Swiggy did not elicit a response until press time.
Rising appetite for online shopping
Consumer demand is evolving, with rising demand for premium categories of segments such as fashion, beauty, watches and jewellery.
India's Northeast comprised around 15% of India e-commerce market in FY25, according to Redseer Strategy Consutants.
The Northeast's sales in the luxury TV segment, priced above ₹1 lakh, has grown by 200%, while large-screen TVs above 55 inches are up by 100%, Srivastava said, adding that premium smartphones priced ₹30,000 and above have more than doubled in volumes, led by Samsung and Apple.
The shift is not confined to electronics. Silver coin sales are up sixfold, professional beauty products have tripled and jewellery demand in Assam has risen 20% y-o-y, with traditional Assamese designs continuing to be favourites, he said. Flipkart points to a steady appetite in categories such as fashion, footwear, beauty and home furnishings.
In terms of lifestyle and fashion, consumers in the Northeast show distinct preferences. For one, they tend to demand smaller apparel sizes, reflecting petite body frames and have been early adopters of the Korean cultural wave—K-dramas, K-fashion and Korean skincare. With limited offline retail catering to such demand, digitally-savvy shoppers are turning online.
Cities such as Imphal in Manipur, Agartala in Tripura, Shillong in Meghalaya and Silchar in Assam show high potential for e-commerce, according to a Kearney India report published in 2024.
Eyeing the untapped regions
The penetration of online retail in the Northeast is now 1.2 times higher than the rest of India. The seller base is also diversifying: since 2021, 60% of the new sellers are from tier-2 or smaller cities, according to a 2025 report by Bain & Co.
“Most of the market leaders have saturated the high-demand, easy-to-service markets. The next wave of growth for the market leaders or the new entrants in the e-com (e-commerce) and q-com (quick commerce) industry will have to come from the medium- to low-demand regions or difficult-to-reach regions," said Kearney’s Gupta.
He said, to achieve metro-level delivery speeds, players will need a two-stage approach—set up large warehouses first, followed by micro-fulfilment centres across neighbouring states.
Exploring opportunity in the Northeast is part of the big online retailers' plan for profitability.
Flipkart Internet, the marketplace arm of the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant, reported revenues of ₹20,433 crore in FY25, up 14% from ₹17,855 crore a year ago, while losses narrowed by nearly 32% to ₹1,568 crore from ₹2,296 crore, according to regulatory filings. The numbers suggest Flipkart is sharpening its focus on profitability even as it continues to expand revenues.
Amazon Seller Services, the marketplace arm of Amazon India, reported revenue of ₹30,138 crore in FY25 up 19% from ₹25,406 crore a year earlier, while losses narrowed by nearly 89% to ₹374 crore from ₹3,470 crore, according to regulatory filings. Mint reported earlier that the reduction in losses was driven largely by higher contributions from marketplace services and advertising.
Flipkart continues to lead India’s e-commerce market, with an estimated 48% share by gross merchandise value (GMV) as of FY23, while Amazon is the runner-up, with 30-35%.
Challenges in the new frontiers
Historically, India's Northeast has seen limited e-commerce investments due to challenges in connectivity and logistics, as also the sparse population, that made deliveries prohibitively expensive.
“Reverse logistics for returns are double as costly outside the Northeastern cities. The purchasing power is also concentrated in the larger cities. The confluence of all these factors had limited investments to the larger cities only," said Madhur Singhal, managing partner, consumer and internet at Praxis Global Alliance, a management consulting firm.
The most important change is the perception of risk, said Singhal, adding that now “companies are not hesitant in creating infrastructure, hiring talent and tapping the latent demand that exists there."
Yet, structural constraints explain why the region was difficult in the first place, and why expansion still won’t be easy. “It is considered tough because of the vast and difficult terrain with low demand, therefore making the fulfillment costs higher and non-viable," said Gupta of Kearney. Climate risks further push up costs.
“This is exacerbated by lower population density, which means that unit level costs are much higher, sometimes even double of what it is in cities. Road connectivity has improved significantly, but the distances and density continues to challenge economics," said Singhal.
Heavy rains and floods in Assam and its neighbouring states in early October—flagged in weather forecasts and disaster advisories—led to traffic blockages and transport slowdowns in parts of Guwahati and beyond. Platforms have not disclosed the scale of order cancellations, but local media reports flagged disruptions in last-mile supply chains.
“My orders for clothes and skincare took more than 10 days, instead of the promised three, and one was cancelled altogether," said Mary Pamei, a 26-year-old Imphal resident. She said while shoppers in the region often place early orders for festivals to avoid disruptions, cancellations are common during floods and deliveries are still unpredictable in the terrain.
“As a result, even when demand picks up, the scale of fulfilment often lags behind," said Kushal Bhatnagar, associate partner at Redseer Strategy.
E-commerce firms try manage these constraints by setting more realistic delivery timelines for remote pincodes.
“[Companies] create fulfillment centres and warehouses in areas that are relatively less prone to disruption and by partnering with local transporters and vehicle owners who understand the terrain well," said Singhal of Praxis. "Climate risks of this nature exist in other parts of the country too, such as Uttaranchal and Himachal."
topics
