Now get grocery at your doorstep, thanks to Amazon

Just two days ago we had informed you that Amazon is planning to set up a logistics company in India to deliver products directly to consumers. And do you know what is the first thing the eCommerce major Amazon is planning to deliver right at your doorsteps—your grocery.

As per the Economic Times report, the e-tailer is launching an express delivery platform in partnership with mom-and-pop stores. The platform has been named Kirana Now for which the company has already started a pilot run in India’s biggest IT hub, Bengaluru. Amazon intends to scale this up nationally, a senior executive from the Seattle-headquartered company told ET.

When TOI reached out to Amazon India's country head Amit Agarwal to know more about Kirana Now, he said that this is an India-specific innovation built particularly for the local market. This is a by-India, for-India service. "We want to provide maximum convenience to customers when shopping for their everyday needs and enable them to shop from the ecosystem of their local stores on their mobile phones and get things delivered when they really need it," Agarwal further added.

Grocery e-tailing isn’t a new concept for Indians, but till now only vertical players like Big Basket and hyper local delivery apps like Grofers have been facilitating grocery deliveries. Now with Amazon taking the plunge into grocery e-tailing, it seems things are going to improve for Indian consumers.

As of now, Amazon has introduced this service only on the mobile platform and will deliver orders within two-four hours.

"These corner stores, which would be listed as sellers, will upload their catalogues online on our platform and we would help with the back-end and technology," Agarwal told ET. The deliveries would be taken care of by Amazon, the kiranas and third-party logistics.

Last year, Amazon had started using kiranas as pick-up and delivery points, an indigenous improvisation on Amazon Lockers which the company operates in the US and some other markets. The online commerce behemoth, which competes aggressively with homegrown e-tailers Flipkart and Snapdeal, extended the pilot that had kicked off last year to as many as 500 stores across 28 cities.