Amazon leverages air, rail for faster festive deliveries across India

Amazon India is strengthening its partnerships with Indian Railways, India Post, various airlines, and trucking partners, as well as leveraging Amazon Air for speedy delivery of products to millions of customers throughout the country during the upcoming festive season.

“We’ve always believed that speed, pricing, and selection are the cornerstones on which we want to serve our customers,” said Abhinav Singh, vice-president of operations at Amazon India. “Every year, we try to be faster than the last, and this year is no different. So we will be faster this year than ever before.”

Amazon was the first e-commerce company to partner with Indian Railways in 2019. It recently signed an agreement with the organisation to deepen that partnership, both in terms of capacity and connections. The aim is to explore more routes and find ways to invent solutions along with the railways for parcel movement.

“We started with just two cities that we connected. Today, we go to over 160 cities as part of our railways network, providing very meaningful fast speeds across the country,” said Singh. “A large part of these are Tier-II and Tier-III cities where we are able to offer much better speeds on the back of the railways network than we were able to offer before.”

Singh said there are also collaborations with the Indian Postal Service and airline partners to provide fast speeds across the country. “We operate with every single airline in the country. We are going to strengthen that freighter network with additional capacity for this festive season,” said Singh.

Last year, Amazon India launched Amazon Air, making it the first e-commerce company in the country to have a dedicated air cargo network. The firm said Amazon Air will utilise the cargo capacity of two Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by Quikjet Cargo Airlines. Each Amazon Air aircraft will ship thousands of packages every day and fly across top cities. Amazon Air helps ship goods faster from fulfilment centres to last-mile deliveries.

“The reason for launching this capacity was to make sure that during the festive season, our Prime customers continue to get the kind of speeds that they are used to and are not burdened by slower speeds because of increased order volumes,” said Singh. “For the festive season specifically, we are working with other airline partners to add freighter capacity.”

Amazon also has a decade-long partnership with India Post. It has co-invented solutions for last-mile deliveries. The collaboration also helps the firm deliver packages to Army pin codes for personnel who are deployed across the country

Amazon India and the state-run Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) have also signed an agreement that allows the e-commerce firm to use inland waterways for transporting customer packages.

To meet the festive demand this year, Amazon India has added three new fulfilment centres to its existing pan-India operations network, which includes over 43 million cubic feet of storage space and sort centres in 19 states. It also has about 2,000 delivery stations. This will help it reach 100 per cent serviceable pin codes.

The firm expects its flagship sale event, Amazon Great Indian Festival (AGIF), this year to be the biggest ever. AGIF 2024 will start on September 27, with 24 hours of early access for Prime members. The firm has increased the number of sellers from 14 lakh to 16 lakh in the past few months. There will be more than 25,000 new product launches across categories on the Amazon platform. The company has also created over 110,000 seasonal job opportunities.