Now, only Prime customers will get Amazon’s grocery delivery in two hours

As the online grocery game is growing fiercer in the country, Amazon India has rebranded its grocery delivery service ‘Amazon Now’ as ‘Prime Now.’ According to a press release from Amazon India, Prime Now will provide two-hour delivery to Prime members between 6 am and midnight. Same-day and next-day delivery will remain available for all customers, in two-hour slots from 6 am to 12 midnight.

Amazon Now was launched around two years ago to deliver groceries including fresh produce from third party store. The service was available for all Amazon customers till now.

Currently this app-only service is available in Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Hyderabad. They have also expanded the selection across fruits and vegetables, grocery, staples, meats, and home and kitchen. The selection also includes electronics accessories, soft furnishings, small appliances from mixer grinders to induction cookers, etc.

Besides collaborating with supermarkets such as Big bazaar, Aditya Birla More, and local specialty sellers like Licious and Pescafresh, Amazon is also using its own Now Store for fulfillment. (The Now Store offers a full range of over 150 perishable grocery across fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy products. The selection is updated every season with seasonal fruits like mangoes available in different varieties. These stores are not open to customer walk-ins and are known as dark stores in industry parlance.)

About the development, Siddharth Nambiar, Head of Prime Now, Amazon India, said,

“We have invested in customised infrastructure of fulfilment centers (FC) for faster deliveries and chill chains to maintain temperatures at optimum conditions for leafy products and dairy products like curd and paneer. We are encouraged by the strong customer response and quantities ordered have grown by 90 percent monthly since the launch of the NOW store.”

In February, Amazon India launched 15 FCs dedicated to Amazon Now – with close to 120,000 cubic feet of storage space for deliveries in key metros. Amazon Prime has been successful across the globe for building customer loyalty. The latest move in India brings another advantage, as grocery is a high repeat category.

On the other hand, online grocery market leaders BigBasket and Grofers have raised fresh funding recently, and are launching multiple new services now – like BigBasket’s milk subscription and Grofers’ membership programme for customer retention.

With the Flipkart-Walmart alliance also bound to take on grocery delivery, Amazon's move comes as a strong one to keep its customers.