Amazon Now expands to Mumbai; select parts of city to now have 10-minute delivery

Amazon has announced the expansion of its 10-minute delivery service Amazon Now to select part of Mumbai on Thursday.

This is the third city to which Amazon Now has expanded. A few months ago, Fortune India had reported that the service had been extended to Delhi as well. Bengaluru was the first city where the service was piloted in December last year.

“We launched Amazon Now in Bengaluru earlier this year, delivering essentials in just 10 minutes. The response has exceeded our most optimistic expectations, with daily orders growing at 25% month over month and Prime members tripling their shopping frequency after they begin using Amazon Now,” said Samir Kumar, VP and Country Manager, Amazon India.

As the e-commerce giant adds cities to its portfolio, Amazon is also expanding the assortment of products that customers can now order using the service.

However, the 10-minute delivery is still not applicable to all products available on the service.

Fortune India had earlier reported that for now only essentials are available in minutes, followed by hourly delivery of full grocery assortment and additional 40,000 items. Meanwhile, over 10 lakh products can get delivered the same day, while another 40 lakh to be delivered by next day, the company revealed.

The essentials category includes certain grocery products, beauty and personal care products, baby products, some electronic accessories such as phone covers or chargers, small appliances, pet supplies, and last-minute festive needs.

More cities are expected to be added to this portfolio in coming months, especially during the festive season.

Users can access the services on the Amazon.in app where the 10 mins icon is present on the top.

“[Amazon Now] (has been) launched in Bengaluru; it is launched in Delhi. All of it is done from the point of view that it has to be a meaningful service across the country, so it will not be something that is limited by city boundaries,” Abhinav Singh, vice president-operations, Amazon India & Australia, told Fortune India.

Unlike other quick-commerce players that offer free deliveries only above a certain order value or on select number of deliveries, Amazon provides its 10-minute delivery service free of cost to all Prime members, with no limit on the number of times they can use it.

In order to support this expansion, Amazon has opened a total of 100 micro-fulfilment centres across these three cities to support the faster deliveries. The plan is to add at least a hundred more by the end of this calendar year.

While Amazon may have been slow in expanding its quick-commerce business, it appears that the company is focused on growing consciously to cities where it has an already well-established network of both fulfilment centres and delivery partners.

“With our robust operations infrastructure, we’re enabling faster, more convenient shopping across a vast selection as we head into the festive season – delivering essentials in minutes, groceries and over 40,000 items within hours, and millions more the same or next day,” added Kumar.

These micro-fulfilment centres are built over the larger fulfilment centres Amazon has spread across the country. The micro centres are compact, technology-enabled facilities focused on ultra-fast deliveries. Basically, the essentials are stocked in these centres after assessing the demand patterns of the neighbourhoods they serve.

“These position essential selection close to customer neighbourhoods, utilising advanced inventory systems that optimise product placement based on hyperlocal demand to maximise efficiency and speed with safety. These centres combine Amazon's operational expertise with proximity-based delivery, creating a seamless experience from order to doorstep within minutes,” the company said in its release.