Although not as much as compared to the United States and China, the online foodservice industry in India is expected to grow by two times by the year 2025 with a congenial setup. In this write-up, let us find out more about Amazon’s home delivery service in the country in the paragraphs that follow.
Amazon food – The Beginning
As of March 2021, Amazon said that it would cater to the prime areas in Bengaluru like HSR, Whitefield, Indiranagar, Sarjapur, MG Road, Frazer Town, Koramangala, Jayanagar, JP Nagar, Rajaji Nagar, and Malleswaram as a food delivery service provider. It said that there are more than 62 pin codes where food would be delivered. It has taken the giant stride since there are more than 2500 restaurants and cloud kitchens that serve customers using its platform.
Amazon food – Food Delivery Service
Despite its efforts, why is Amazon still behind the other well-known food delivery service providers like Swiggy and Zomato? Let us find out more about the same.
E-commerce giant Amazon introduced its food delivery app Amazon Food in 2020 from Bengaluru. However, it came as a surprise for most of the industry players when it was found that for the Amazon food delivery partner (restaurants partners), food delivery through Amazon food has not been more than 1%. Experts are saying that things have not been catching up as they should be due to the absence of aggression.
When Amazon food entered the market, it was assumed that it was going to break the duopoly of the other two food delivery giants Zomato and Swiggy.
Some think it might be due to the Covid pandemic, while few believe that the tech giant might not want to scale up. Few also think that it is pretty likely that manpower might be a factor, and perhaps they would like to adhere to what Amazon is best at.
So, what might be responsible for the slow pace?
Industry sources reveal that there might be three reasons for the same-
- Stringent standards in onboarding on the app
- The company does not want to engage in a war of discounts and discounting strategies, although it may be mentioned here that the commission Amazon food charges are way less than Zomato and Swiggy. While for the Amazon app, it is 10% to 15% per order, for the other two, it is between 15% and 25%, and in some cases, for Zomato, it might go up to 30% as well.
- Sub-par discovery on the app.
Final Thoughts
Amazon’s strict norms related to the onboarding of restaurants and its multi-point checking standards have created a constraint on the supply side.
Few industry players think that if Amazon wishes to double their engagement of clients in the food delivery sector, it will extend more discounts to the customers and provide better service and commission so that they can get a broader spectrum of clients in this category. On December 2022, Amazon has shut its food delivery service in India.
Also Read: Food Delivery Applications in India – Delivery At Your Doorstep
