Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy is on a visit to India, and will meet senior government officials, entrepreneurs, and employees, the ecommerce giant said on Wednesday. He is also set to meet prime minister Narendra Modi on Thursday in New Delhi, according to people aware of his plans.
Jassy was in Mumbai on Wednesday and met business leaders including Sunil D’Souza, MD and CEO, Tata Consumer Products; Abhijeet Kishore, CEO, Vodafone Idea; Anchit Nayar, CEO-beauty and ecommerce, Nykaa; Vibha Prabhakar, MD and CEO, HDFC Life; Anil Rai Gupta, chairman and MD, Havells India; Praveer Sinha, CEO and MD, Tata Power; Zia Mody, founder and managing partner, AZB & Partners; and V Vaidyanathan, MD and CEO, IDFC First Bank.
Jassy’s visit comes as Amazon sharpens its focus on quick commerce. The company said today that it is expanding its 10-minute delivery service, Amazon Now, to 300 cities. The upgraded expansion plan follows just two months after the company announced that it intends to roll out the service to 100 cities and build a network of 1,000 dark stores.
Currently, Amazon Now has about 500 dark stores across 15 metro and non-metro cities, including Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Amritsar, and Kochi.
Jassy had said during the March quarter earnings call that Amazon Now’s orders are growing 25% month on month and that Prime members triple their shopping frequency once they start using the service.
In February, Amazon had announced that it will invest Rs 2,800 crore (about $300 million) to strengthen its infrastructure and operations across the country, with a particular focus on quick commerce. This was a part of its previous commitment to invest $35 billion in India by 2030.
According to the company, Amazon Now orders have doubled every quarter since launch.
In an earlier conversation with ET, Amazon India’s country manager Samir Kumar had said that it aims to emerge as the market leader in the quick commerce category. “We were slow out of the gate, but we were not sitting idle. We were figuring out what we should do and how we should serve our customers in this format,” he had said. “Once we decided to get there, we got there quickly. But we took our time to build it the right way.”
Amazon's rival Flipkart is also upping the ante on quick commerce. On Wednesday, Flipkart Minutes announced it has expanded to 1,000 fulfilment centres across 130 cities less than two years since launch. The Walmart-owned company is now adding about 100 stores per month, or three to four per day, senior executives said.
Last week, Amazon Now also announced that it is launching 100 large fulfilment centres across cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, and Mumbai as it expands beyond groceries to offer its users electronics, fans, humidifiers, and other household items.
