Amazon India's new engine: Everyday essentials, in minutes to next day

Half of all orders are now daily essentials, as the e-commerce giant sees speed and selection locking in shopper loyalty

Amazon India has quietly become a habit for its shoppers. Half of all orders placed on the e-commerce giant's India platform now consist of daily essentials — from vegetables and dairy to shampoo and rice — as shoppers increasingly use the site for routine replenishment rather than occasional big-ticket purchases.

 

The shift underscores a strategic evolution for Amazon, which has built a business called Everyday Essentials around the bet that habitual, lower-margin purchases will deepen customer loyalty and drive frequency across its broader marketplace. The unit now spans more than 1.6 million products and reaches every serviceable pin code in India, growing 30 per cent year-on-year.

 

The Indian customer is no longer just stocking up; they are discovering, upgrading and replenishing across pack sizes, formats and price points. Amazon's most engaged customers shop the category 50 to 60 times a year.

 

“A big share of the customer's wallet generates very high customer frequency, which in turn has a lot of downstream value for us as a company,” said Harsh Goyal, vice-president for Everyday Essentials at Amazon India, in a video interview.

 

Goyal said customers who begin buying perishables such as fruits, vegetables, dairy and meat on Amazon tend to become more loyal shoppers across other categories. That frequency, paired with delivery options spanning 10-minute fulfilment to next-day delivery, has pushed essentials to more than half of all units sold on Amazon India.

 

The growth comes as quick commerce has scaled rapidly across India. More than 5,700-6,000 dark stores, led by Blinkit, Instamart, Zepto and Flipkart, served roughly 2,600 pin codes and about 230 million people — around 17 per cent of India's population — according to research firm Bernstein. Amazon is going through its most contested period yet, as these rivals aggressively expand their dark-store networks.

 

Goyal said Amazon's everyday essentials category extends beyond groceries and household products to include frequently purchased, lower-value items such as USB cables, phone adapters, innerwear and socks. Higher-value, infrequently purchased products that involve extensive consideration — such as smartphones and washing machines — are not classified as everyday essentials, he said.

 

The company's quick-commerce arm, Amazon Now, is fuelling essential penetration further. The service is gaining traction, with orders rising about 25 per cent month-on-month. Amazon sees a threefold jump in shopping frequency once Prime members adopt Amazon Now.

 

Amazon Now is expanding to 100 cities, rolling out in Amritsar, Kochi, Mangaluru and several other cities, building on operations already running in Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai, among other cities. The company plans to scale the service using more than 1,000 micro-fulfilment centres, extending coverage beyond metros into smaller cities.

 

Amazon is also rolling out over 100 specialised Urban Fulfilment Centres (UFCs) to upgrade Amazon Now. These larger-format facilities will carry four to five times more items than traditional micro-fulfilment centres, allowing thousands of expanded-category products — including apparel, electronics, jewellery, furniture and baby products — to be delivered in minutes.

 

Amazon said its differentiation rests on a logistics network built over 13 years: 43 million cubic feet of storage capacity across 16 states, sortation centres across 19 states, around 2,000 delivery stations and roughly 28,000 delivery partner stores. The network enables deliveries ranging from minutes for everyday essentials to same-day and next-day fulfilment for millions of products, including more than 40,000 items in under four hours through Amazon Fresh. Amazon sources fresh produce directly from more than 16,000 farmers.

 

The company has committed ₹4,800 crore since 2025 to expand its operations infrastructure and workforce support programmes.

 

“Ultimately, it boils down to selection or assortment, availability, quality, speed and savings,” said Goyal.

 

Goyal said Amazon Now has expanded from a handful of Bengaluru pin codes to 15-20 cities, with plans to reach 1,000 centres across 100 cities. He said demand is outpacing capacity in several markets and that cities where the service has launched are growing 20-25 per cent month-on-month, with the business effectively doubling every three to four months.

 

As Amazon expands into Tier-II and Tier-III cities, Goyal said the company tailors its offering by region. For instance, preferences for products such as milk vary significantly, and customer behaviour differs based on family structures and daily routines, with larger Tier-II and Tier-III households often shopping at different times and for different products than metro customers.

 

“One vector of growth for quick commerce is expanding beyond metros to smaller cities,” Goyal said. He said growth is also being fuelled by higher purchase frequency among existing customers, broader product assortments and market-share gains as more households adopt quick-commerce services.

 

In January, the Labour Ministry pushed Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart to drop “10-minute” delivery branding over rider-safety concerns. Goyal welcomed the government's intervention and said Amazon has long focused on safe working conditions for delivery partners and fulfilment-centre associates. He said rapid deliveries are driven primarily by supply-chain design and inventory placement rather than faster driving, with popular products stocked close to customers to enable minute-level delivery without compromising safety.

 

“The true enabler of ‘minutes’ delivery is the supply chain, which is upstream and not visible to the customer directly,” he said.