Amazon plans to invest $3 billion to expand its India quick-commerce business by 2030, according to The Economic Times, its largest commitment yet to a delivery category where it has trailed local rivals for years.
The plan calls for $1 billion by the end of 2027 and another $2 billion by 2030, according to media reports. The company did say that its quick-commerce business, sold under the Amazon Now brand inside its main shopping app, has crossed $1 billion in annualized gross sales over the past three months, calling it the fastest-growing e-commerce business in Amazon India’s history.
Quick commerce, the practice of delivering groceries and small household goods within minutes rather than days, has reshaped how people in India’s cities shop. The category is worth $19 billion today and is projected to more than double to $41 billion by 2030, according to research firm Datum Intelligence. Amazon and Flipkart, the e-commerce platform owned by Walmart, both came to the category late, and it shows in the numbers: Blinkit, owned by Eternal; Swiggy; and the soon-to-list Zepto together hold 77 percent of the market and run more than 4,500 stores between them. Flipkart (a unit of Walmart) holds 11 percent with more than 1,000 stores. Amazon’s current share is 6 percent.
The new money is aimed mainly at opening small neighborhood warehouses that feed the Amazon Now network, along with better inventory software and artificial intelligence tools for predicting demand. The company is targeting 1,300 stores by April 2027, up from 750 today. Amazon plans to keep the assortment narrow and focused on daily essentials; Amazon does not plan to stock items unlikely to be reordered quickly, which is why, unlike some competitors, it has kept smartphones out of its quick-commerce catalog.
The expansion comes as Amazon works within India’s rules for foreign e-commerce companies and a pending 2024 case in which the country’s antitrust regulator found that Amazon gave preferential treatment to select sellers, a finding the company disputes. Rider safety has also drawn regulatory attention: India’s government ordered companies in January to stop advertising delivery times as fast as ten minutes, following concerns about delivery riders speeding through residential streets.
For American executives watching India’s retail sector, the plan is a reminder that scale alone does not guarantee a lead in India’s fastest-growing consumer categories, and that even the largest global platforms sometimes have to invest their way back into a segment that they entered late.
