With the Government of India’s approval to invest $500 million in its food retail business, Amazon India will soon commence its online grocery and food retail division. Amazon has almost doubled its authorized capital to $4.74 billion matching its earlier capital commitment of $5 billion made in June, 2016.
The company has already launched Amazon Now, an app to facilitate home delivery of food and grocery items from designated grocery chains. Currently, Amazon’s warehouses in India do not store food items to meet the Amazon Now demand, but will do so from March onward this year.
India’s online grocery and food retail market is set to witness more competition as Alibaba along with Paytm Mall is set to acquire about a 35% stake in hyperlocal grocery delivery startup BigBasket against an investment of $300 million. Flipkart is also aggressively looking to enter the food retail business in India.
