Amazon eyeing to expand grocery business in B towns

New Delhi: Amazon India is focussing on attracting more first-time customers from tier II, non-metro towns in the country.

The e-commerce giant saw a 20 percent in first-time online shoppers – particularly from tier II and III cities and towns in India over the past year, Mint reported. In fact, 65 percent of all orders and over 85 percent of new customers were from these regions, it said. Bizsamachar could not independently verify the report.

Particularly in the grocery segment, over 60 percent of new customers were from tier II and III cities and towns. In fact, overall customer base and new users on the retailers’ grocery platforms Amazon Fresh and Amazon Pantry doubled.

Fresh was integrated with Amazon’s pantry service to create an online express delivery store in 10 cities in February 2021. Pantry will continue in remaining 290 cities where Fresh is not available.

Manish Tiwary, vice-president, Amazon India told the paper that grocery category grew “more than 2X” and served as a “gateway” for customers to Amazon.in.

“These customers have, over time, shopped across categories and there is a huge growth potential in e-grocery, which is still a small market … this category will grow multiple times for the next few years,” he said.

Tiwary also expects a “large chuck” of new customers to continue from smaller towns and plans to scale its offerings in the grocery (fresh and dry) segment to reach the top 50 Indian cities.