The Silicon Review ^Asia

Amazon Retail India (ARIPL), the food retailing subsidiary of Amazon, appears to be finally executing its expansion plans after receiving approval from New Delhi two years ago. Currently, it is present in more than a hundred cities, and in the next 12-14 months, it looks forward to expand its presence to 60 tier-II and III cities across the country. The company has also got the federal approval to invest $500 million in a venture to sell locally-produced food items.

Several food distributors in various cities familiar with Amazon’s plans said that the firm will be working on its hub-and-spoke supply chain model, and for that, it is curatingnumerous small delivery centres in the range of 2000 sqft in tier II and III cities. Many Suppliers too have said that the company will be depending on smaller warehouses for high-moving FMCG products. According to certain sources, Amazon Retail India has about 3000 stock keeping units of food items, and to sell them, it has arranged up a network of 250 suppliers in various cities. Amazon hasn’t responded to any of these speculations.

Back in 2016, when the government allowed overseas capital to sell locally packaged food items for the first time, Amazon was the only large global corporation to invest in India. As per the rules, Amazon wasn’t supposed to share warehousing and other supply chain paraphernalia with its e-commerce marketplace, but now, after the clearing of these issues, the venture is expanding. Amazon is now developing new warehouses that will be dedicated for ARIPL and will be used to share with other Amazon operations.