Amazon swoops into India’s food delivery market soon after Uber leaves it. According to TechCrunch the service that could be launched in as soon as a month will be offered as part of Amazon’s Prime Now or Amazon Fresh platform.
The company had previously planned to launch it’s restaurant delivery service during Diwali but delays set it back. During this time Amazon have been testing the service with select restaurant partners within Bangalore.
“We believe in innovating on behalf of our customers to create newer experiences for them. As part of this commitment, we are constantly evaluating new areas and opportunities to connect with and serve our customers. We will come back to you when we have something to announce,”
– Amazon Spokesperson.
This isn’t the first we’ve heard about Amazon delving into restaurant delivery, the short lived Amazon restaurants shut down in 2018 and last year Amazon led a funding round for deliveroo and ended up in the naughty corner when the Competition and Markets Authority froze the investment as they believed it could cause damage to competition in restaurant and grocery delivery. The CMA is currently undergoing an in-depth investigation of Amazon’s funding investment and will rule on the deal by June.
Figuring out the best route to profitability in Indias economy could prove difficult for Amazon, or any new food delivery service for that matter, and the Indian food delivery services Swiggy and Zomato have really raised the bar for food delivery business. Amazon would be up against strong and established competition, Swiggy in particularly have a well rounded restaurant delivery network in 520 cities with over 160,000 partners which are increasing by 10,000 each month.
Amazon look confident with their already large delivery network in India through its own logistics and partnerships. Perhaps Amazon will be seeing whether they can rush Prime Now one hour deliveries to customers in between food deliveries.
