Credit: Amazon Amazon will spend $3bn to grow its quick-commerce business in India by 2030, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing two people who know the plans directly. Quick commerce is the term for app orders that reach shoppers within minutes. Amazon declined to comment on the figures. It did say, however, that its quick-commerce arm had passed $1bn in annualised gross sales in the last three months.
That makes it the fastest-growing part of its Indian e-commerce business so far. According to Reuters, the first $1bn will be spent by the end of 2027 and the other $2bn by 2030. Most of it will pay for new small neighbourhood warehouses for Amazon Now, the service inside the main Amazon app that handles these deliveries. One source told Reuters that Amazon wants about 1,300 of these sites by April, up from roughly 750 today.
The rest of the money will go on inventory software, AI tools that predict demand, and a wider range of products. Amazon is starting a long way behind its rivals. Blinkit, Swiggy and Zepto together hold 77% of the market, according to Datum Intelligence data cited by Reuters, while Walmart’s Flipkart has 11% and Amazon has 6.2%. Datum expects the market, worth $19bn today, to reach $41bn by 2030.
For now, Amazon plans to stick to everyday essentials. It will not stock products that customers are unlikely to order again, one source said, which is why the service does not sell iPhones as some rivals do. Analysts at Bernstein warned in July that groceries alone cannot pay for the high costs of quick commerce, because orders are small and other goods carry higher margins. Amazon also has to work within India’s strict rules on foreign e-commerce firms.
In 2024, the competition regulator found it had favoured some sellers, which Amazon denies. In January, the government also told delivery firms to stop selling their services as 10-minute deliveries, over rider safety concerns. Satish Meena, founder of Datum Intelligence, told Reuters that catching rivals with loyal customers would be hard. Even so, he said Amazon could use offers to move its existing shoppers over to fast delivery.
