Amazon has failed in Indian food delivery before. It shut down Amazon Food in December 2022 after spending over two years and onboarding roughly 3,000 restaurant partners, including McDonald's and Domino's, without denting the Zomato-Swiggy duopoly. In a letter to restaurant partners at the time, it had said, "After a careful evaluation, we have decided to discontinue Amazon Food."

In rolling out Amazon Now, its 10-to-15-minute delivery service, the e-commerce giant is trying to enter India's quick-commerce market, a sector that already has established players.

The move will test whether Amazon's global scale and deep pockets can successfully break the stranglehold currently held by incumbents like Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy Instamart.

Quick commerce, unlike restaurant delivery, plays directly to the strengths Amazon has spent over a decade building in India. This includes warehousing, last-mile logistics, and supplier relationships across the grocery, personal care, and household essentials sectors. It doesn't need to build a restaurant network from nothing. It just needs to add a new layer on top of what it already has.

Why Is This Time Different?

Sandeep Abhange, research analyst at LKP Securities, draws a clear line between the two businesses. "Food delivery and quick commerce are fundamentally different markets," he told The Core. "Quick commerce is an extension of retail, where Amazon already has supplier relationships, fulfilment infrastructure, and a large Prime customer base. The logic is stronger this time."

That existing relationship with brands and sellers is a real head start. Most quick commerce platforms spend their early years persuading grocery and FMCG brands to list with them. Amazon has largely skipped that step, since most of those brands are already selling on its marketplace.

Satish Meena, founder of Datum Intelligence, said that Amazon starts from a position of strength here. "Amazon already has brands selling on it, so they don't have to onboard a lot of brands," he said.

Also, quick commerce has been eating into Amazon's own business. "Before quick commerce, for long-tail categories, Amazon was your preferred destination. With quick commerce, we may have seen some switching happen. Amazon now wants to recapture that customer."

In the case of quick commerce, Amazon isn’t as much of an outsider as it was with the food delivery business. It's trying to win back a customer base that drifted away from it, using infrastructure it had mostly already built.

The Customer Overlap Amazon Can Exploit

Amazon's biggest weapon may be its existing customer base. "There will be a massive overlap between an Amazon Prime customer and a Blinkit or Zepto customer," said Meena. "Those are high-income households. Their spending will be much higher."

He also argued that loyalty in this category is thin, which works in Amazon's favour. "Differentiation is minimal. A customer might have one primary app and order 80% of the time from it. The other 20% they'll check delivery time or availability. That's where Amazon can pick up share."

This overlap is concentrated in metros, which is also where quick commerce itself is concentrated, since the model needs dense order volumes within a 2-3 km radius of each dark store to work. That's part of why Amazon Now's rollout has stuck to Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai rather than smaller cities.

What Amazon Has Already Built

Amazon Now started as a pilot in Whitefield, Bengaluru, in early 2025, with four dark stores and access limited to just 1% of Prime customers. Orders quickly climbed to 2,000 a day.

Since then, Amazon has expanded into Delhi and Mumbai and plans to have over 300 dark stores running across the three cities by the end of 2025, backed by a Rs 2,000 crore investment in fulfilment, sortation, and delivery infrastructure.

For context on what it's stepping into, India's quick commerce market was worth around $5.38 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $9.95 billion by 2029, growing at roughly 17% a year. Quick commerce now makes up close to two-thirds of all online grocery orders in the country. That's the kind of growth that's hard for a large retailer to ignore, especially one watching a category it used to own move to 10-minute delivery apps.

The Reality Check

The market Amazon’s entering already has Blinkit at around 2,100 dark stores and roughly 48% share as of early 2026, Zepto running over 1,100 dark stores across 66 cities, and Swiggy Instamart at around 1,100-1,200 dark stores with 23-25% share. Together, the three control well over 90% of the market. Amazon's 300 planned stores, while a serious commitment, are still small next to that.

"Matching the current scale of incumbents is a much larger undertaking," he said Abhange. "Considering a dark store investment of Rs 50-90 lakh per location, along with technology, supply chain, and customer acquisition costs, Amazon may need upwards of $1.5-2 billion and 3-4 years to build a comparable network."

The other complication is that quick commerce doesn't reward size, it rewards density in a specific neighbourhood. Amazon's global scale doesn't automatically translate into faster delivery in a particular pin code.

As Abhange puts it, "Amazon's strengths in assortment, technology, and logistics definitely matter, but quick commerce economics are driven by hyperlocal density rather than national scale. Blinkit and Zepto have spent 4-5 years optimising inventory placement, rider productivity, and store-level economics. Winning in 10-minute delivery requires neighbourhood-level execution where incumbents currently enjoy a significant advantage."

Meena sees it as a structural shift for Amazon's own operations. "Amazon is changing its playbook," he said. "Before this, they had a big warehouse outside the city and delivered from there. Now they are adding a layer of micro-warehouses near customers. It is not easy for companies to change their logistics suddenly. That is what has taken them time."

How Far Can the Disruption Go?

Amazon's longer-term ambition stretches to 300 cities, well beyond its current three-city launch. That's a big number to test against the market's actual shape: 75-80% of quick commerce GMV currently comes from the top eight Indian cities, and even Blinkit, the leader, operates in around 150 cities.

While the demand opportunity exists, it is likely to more in the metros. "Tier 2 and tier 3 markets can drive future growth, but customer density and basket sizes remain lower. The bulk of value creation over the next few years is likely to come from the top 25-30 cities,” said Abhange.

A dark store in a smaller city won't see Bengaluru-level order numbers, but it also won't carry Bengaluru-level rent or staffing costs. "In 200 cities you can offer this — maybe not in all areas, but in certain sectors," Meena said. "Dark store rentals will be low, salaries will be low. Their dark stores might do 500-600 orders a day instead of 2,000, but the cost will also be proportional."

A Tougher Market to Disrupt Than It Looks

One thing works against Amazon's timing: the incumbents it's chasing have stopped burning cash and started turning a profit. Blinkit has reported adjusted EBITDA breakeven. Zepto, which has filed for an IPO, has been moving toward profitability. Swiggy Instamart's contribution margins have improved sharply.

Trust is the other long game Amazon needs to win. "Quick commerce works because customers believe 99.9% of the time they will get what they need," Meena said. "Amazon has to reach that level. Once you trust a platform for everything, even a band-aid at 10 at night, even a printout before a flight, that is when the household is locked in."

The Bottom Line

Amazon's disruption case is real, but it's not a quick one. It has the capital, the Prime base, the supplier relationships, and a customer overlap with quick commerce users that it can convert over time. What it doesn't have yet is the dark store density or the years of neighbourhood-level execution that Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart have already put in.

As Abhange sums it up, "Amazon has the capital. Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart still have the execution advantage."

A top-four position looks well within reach. Whether Amazon can go beyond that and genuinely disrupt the top three will depend less on how much it spends, and more on whether it can match the operational grind its rivals have spent years getting right.