Amazon sets up 15 centres for grocery, consumables

BENGALURU: Amazon India has set up 15 specialised fulfilment centres (FCs) to ramp up its daily essentials and consumables business for Amazon Now. The company, which has taken the hyperlocal delivery platform to the top four metro cities, will be utilising the new warehouses to meet demands for its two-hour express deliveries as well as scheduled ones on Amazon Now.

The development comes at a time when Alibaba finally inked a $300-million investment deal with online grocer BigBasket recently.

Amazon Now was launched two years back in Bengaluru as a hyperlocal platform to push the grocery business of the company. These new FCs will add a storage capacity of 1,20,000 cubic feet for this business, said Amazon VP (India customer fulfilment) Akhil Saxena. With the addition of the new 15 FCs, Amazon has a total of 56 FCs in the country with a storage capacity of almost 13.5 million cubic feet.

“We have put significant investments in building infrastructure for our various businesses here and we are scaling up and investing in our infrastructure and delivery network for Amazon Now so that we can increase our speed of delivery and provide a superior experience to customers,” said Saxena, who heads logistics for Amazon India. Amazon had also built nine FCs to cater to large appliances and furniture businesses here.

Amazon India