Even as industry leaders warn that quick commerce growth is beginning to moderate, ecommerce giant Amazon is making an aggressive bet on the 10-minute delivery segment, with India country manager Samir Kumar telling ET that the company aims to emerge as the market leader.
“We are in this to win it and are going to be a market leader in the near future,” Kumar said, outlining plans to expand Amazon Now to more than 100 cities and over 1,000 dark stores.
Amazon's push comes as competition in quick commerce intensifies. Both Amazon and Flipkart are expanding aggressively after incumbents Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, and IPO-bound Zepto established an early lead in rapid deliveries, capturing a growing share of consumer spending in India's largest cities and challenging traditional ecommerce marketplaces.
While Amazon was among the last large players to enter the category after losing urban shoppers to rivals, Kumar argued that the company deliberately took time to get the model right.
“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 said. “Once we decided to get there, we got there quickly. But we took our time to build it the right way.”
Rejecting the notion that Amazon had missed the opportunity, Kumar said, "I don't believe we were late to the game because we still believe this is day one for this story. It will play out over the next few years.”
The company is also brushing aside concerns over mounting competition and aggressive discounting in the sector. Rival executives have publicly accused the ecommerce giant of triggering a fresh pricing battle as it expands Amazon Now. Eternal founder Deepinder Goyal recently said in an interview with FT that Blinkit was willing to outspend Amazon. In contrast, Swiggy has said it would sit out any price wars in the quick commerce space.
Kumar did not comment on profitability pressures but said customer experience would remain the company’s focus.
“For us, it's about providing the best possible value, the widest selection, and the fastest speed,” he said. “We're here to win in the long run. We're not a player that invests for a few months and goes away.”
Kumar also sought to distinguish quick commerce from Amazon's unsuccessful food delivery experiment in India, which was shut down in 2022 .
"Quick commerce is an extension of our overall ecommerce play in India. There's nothing we're doing there that's different from what we have done for the past 13 years," he said. "We want to offer the widest selection possible at every speed point."
ET reported in May that Amazon was stepping up its 10-minute delivery push , putting market leader Blinkit under pressure across key metros.
Andy Jassy, the company’s CEO, said during its 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. According to people in the know, Amazon Now is clocking around 450,000-500,000 orders a day on average with a footprint of around 500 dark stores, compared with Blinkit’s more than 3 million daily orders from over 2,200 such micro warehouses.
“Store count is a vanity metric. I'm not going to focus on that. I'm going to focus on the coverage we provide. When we enter a city with a micro-fulfilment centre, are we able to give a great experience to the customer living in the vicinity of that store? If we can do that, we'll continue to operate that store. If we can't, then we have work to do to get there,” Kumar explained.
While declining to share operational metrics such as orders per dark store, Kumar said mature locations were showing improving performance across key indicators.
"We have internal markers. It's not just about growth at all costs," he said. "Our more mature stores are doing well on metrics such as orders per day, deliveries per hour, and average order value."
With quick commerce evolving into one of India's most fiercely contested internet businesses, Amazon is signalling that it intends to match rivals not just on delivery speed but also on assortment and long-term investment.
“Price, selection, and convenience have always been our pillars,” Kumar said. “If we continue doing that, we'll have happy customers who come back again and again, and we'll be successful.”
In a December interview with ET, Amazon’s senior vice president Amit Agarwal had said that the company’s dark store expansion was indexed to the size of its Prime loyalty programme , with subscribers shopping three times more frequently within 90 days of a new dark store launching in their area.
“Prime is an important programme for us. In India, it's one of the largest subscription programmes… between 2023 and this year, we've doubled the number of Prime members,” Kumar noted.
However, he did not reveal whether the dark store expansion plan would continue to be driven by the Prime customer base.
“We do use that as one of the markers to decide whom we should serve first. So our expansion strategy does include Prime, but there are other factors as well. It's not limited to that,” he said.
