BENGALURU: For years, Amazon set the pace for faster delivery in Indian e-commerce. Then quick commerce reset expectations altogether, compressing delivery windows from days to minutes.
“Were we slow off the gate? I’ll acknowledge a little bit of that,” Amazon India country manager Samir Kumar told Mint in an interview, reflecting on the company’s response to a category that has rapidly become one of the most important forces shaping retail in the country.
Now, Amazon is moving to catch up. Quick commerce has become one of its biggest priorities in India, with plans to scale its quick-commerce service, Amazon Now, to 100 cities this year through more than 1,000 micro-fulfilment centres. The company is launching about two to three such facilities a day, building on its 13-year-old fulfilment and seller infrastructure.
“We are leveraging our 13 years of experience building the entire supply chain,” Kumar said, arguing that Amazon’s strengths in selection, inventory management, and fulfilment will become increasingly important as quick commerce matures.
The push comes as Amazon marks 13 years in India, with the country’s e-commerce market entering a new phase. Quick commerce has reshaped convenience and speed expectations even as millions of new users continue to come online, leaving room for further expansion in online retail.
Amazon was among the early players to offer same-day and next-day delivery for Prime customers, long before newer entrants compressed timelines to minutes. Kumar said the company has steadily improved delivery speeds within Prime and is now extending that effort through Amazon Now.
Amazon remains India’s second-largest e-commerce player, with a 25-30% gross merchandise value share and nearly 150 million monthly active users, according to a May report by ICICI Securities.
Its marketplace unit, Amazon Seller Services, cut losses by a tenth to ₹374 crore in FY25 from a year earlier, helped by controlled expenses and higher marketplace and advertising revenue, according to financial statements accessed by business intelligence platform Tofler.
Beyond speed
For Kumar, quick commerce is not just about faster delivery than rivals. Amazon’s bet is that its scale advantages—in assortment, supply chain management and technology—will become more decisive as the category expands.
“The game will be offering the widest selection at the lowest depth,” Kumar said. “That’s where our technology and tools that we have built over the years will be a big differentiator.”
Amazon is positioning Amazon Now as a complementary layer to its core marketplace: a quick-commerce service for everyday and last-minute purchases, alongside a broader platform for planned, higher-value shopping.
“If you forgot a gift before a party, Amazon Now will offer you that,” Kumar said. “But for bigger planned purchases—from party supplies to home-improvement products—Amazon’s wider catalogue remains its differentiator.”
Early signals, according to Kumar, suggest traction is building.Amazon Now order volumes are growing about 25% month-on-month, while Prime customers shop three times more frequently once they begin using the service, Kumar said. Sellers are also increasingly participating as demand rises.
The Prime ecosystem remains central to Amazon’s India strategy. The company expects its India Prime member base to nearly double from 2023 levels by the end of 2026, with more than 70% of new members coming from non-metro cities. Prime members, Kumar said, shop five times more frequently than non-Prime customers.
Bullish on India
Despite intensifying competition across e-commerce and quick commerce, Kumar said Amazon’s conviction in India has strengthened.
“India is still very young. India is still coming online,” he said, pointing to rising internet adoption, growing disposable incomes and relatively low e-commerce penetration.
That outlook underpins investment. Amazon has committed $35 billion towards India by 2030 and recently announced an additional ₹2,800 crore investment in operations infrastructure, expanding fulfilment capacity in cities including Bhubaneshwar, Patna and Visakhapatnam, and strengthening delivery networks in regions such as the northeast.
Kumar rejected the idea that quick commerce forces a trade-off between growth and profitability.
“It’s not growth or profitability. It’s growth and profitability,” he said. “While we want to grow big and fast, we are not a charity. We’re going to build a business the right way.”
Looking ahead, he pointed to artificial intelligence as a potential enabler across sellers and consumers, particularly in smaller cities—from helping entrepreneurs create product listings in local languages to improving discovery and shopping experiences for first-time internet users.
“For a big part of India, AI will not just make things better. It will make things possible,” Kumar said.