Amazon boosts investment in speed for faster deliveries across multiple products

New Delhi: Online marketplace Amazon India will invest more in "speed" amid shifting preferences where consumers want everything from their soaps to pizzas delivered within hours, instead of days.

“We deliver an assortment of 1 million products on the same day to Prime members and 4 million products the next day. This is the kind of investment we have made in speed. So for us, it is very broad based—i.e how to get the largest number of products, to the largest number of customers at the fastest speed possible. That's our focus and we'll continue to speed it up," Saurabh Srivastava, vice-president, categories, Amazon India, said in an interview with Mint. "We have launched sub same-day deliveries in metro cities and are expanding it. You can get products as fast as four-to-six hours. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of products."

The sub same-day delivery feature promises to deliver products the same day, within 4-6 hours of making the online purchase.

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To be sure, Amazon has been working towards lowering delivery timelines for consumers in India for some time now.

Same-day delivery

In 2022, the company had said it is extending the option of same-day delivery to Prime members in over 50 cities and towns. Thousands of products across categories such as consumer electronics, books, toys, babycare, media, kitchen, luxury, sports, video games, and personal care equipment will now be available for free delivery within four hours, the company had said then.

Such deliveries depend on whether a shopper is an Amazon Prime member and the city from where the order is being placed. "The selection then varies from 100,000 to a million," he said. Categories that fall under a four-to-six-hour delivery window cover grocery, home and kitchen products, beauty, fashion, mobile accessories etc. “Our selection breadth is constantly expanding," he said.

Amazon Prime is a subscription plan that offers fast, free delivery of goods purchased on the marketplace.

Quick commerce

Amazon's move follows the rise of quick commerce, with rivals like Flipkart and Zepto offering rapid deliveries of a wide range of products. This has shifted consumer expectations and forced incumbents to prioritize speed.

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Amazon’s Fresh service that offers grocery and daily essentials also allows consumers to opt for same-day delivery - the slot-based service is live in 130 cities.

News reports suggest that Amazon plans to offer quick commerce deliveries.“There is, of course, a certain need for quick commerce and it's an exciting space. There is no doubt about it but we believe that if you take a very vast selection, offer great prices and savings, and deliver it fast across the country, that's a very very large opportunity and we will continue to be focused on that," Srivastava said when asked about Amazon’s views on the quick commerce space.

Quick commerce platforms such as Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto currently operate in select markets but are expanding rapidly.

Fulfilment centres

Last week, Amazon announced the opening up of three new fulfilment centres in Delhi-NCR, Guwahati and Patna that it said will significantly boost delivery speeds for customers in North and East India during the upcoming festive season.

Amazon operates fulfilment centres across 50 Indian cities, meeting demand for a wide range of products. The number of centres and their sizes vary to meet local demand. “Fulfilment centres that we use for sub same-day delivery—we are literally adding those every week," he said, adding that such centres offer a “large selection".

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On Friday, Amazon announced offers and deals for its upcoming Amazon Great Indian Festival 2024—its annual festive season sale that will commence later this month. Srivastava said Amazon hosted its largest-ever festive season sale last year.

“Last year, the Great Indian Festival was the biggest ever. We believe this year, we are going to break that record by a big margin. Last year, we had 1.1 billion visits; almost 4 million new customers shopped with us," he said.