As netizens continue to stay at home due to the lockdown restrictions, American e-commerce giant Amazon has today launched a food delivery service in India. Called Amazon Food, the service is accessible directly from the regular Amazon app. It has been launched in a bid to rival the growing presence of food delivery giants, Zomato and Swiggy, in the country.
Rumors of Amazon looking to enter the food delivery space have been floating around for quite some time. The company has been internally testing the service since last year in partnership with select restaurants in Bengaluru. Now, Amazon Food has gone live today but is limited to select pin codes in Bengaluru to start with.
The service allows customers to order food from local restaurants and cloud kitchens. It is great to see Amazon make hygiene the utmost priority and build its own hygiene certification bar. It wants to convince users that food delivered from its partners adheres to “the highest standards of safety.”
We are currently unsure whether that’s a claim for the entirety of the service or each restaurant has a hygiene rating. We attempted to test the food delivery by switching pin codes but in vain. The delivery service is only available in these pin codes – 560048, 560037, 560066, 560103.
In an official statement, Amazon India says that customer feedback (and the need to order prepared meals) has led to the launch of its food delivery service. This service will also help local restaurants, which have been the worst hit due to the pandemic. It will be interesting to see how quickly the service expands and whether netizens make the switch from Zomato or Swiggy.
As Amazon India steps foot into the food delivery segment, rivals Zomato and Swiggy are diversifying their service to offer more. Zomato has started grocery delivery under the Zomato Market tag while Swiggy has gone all in. It has started grocery delivery, a hyperlocal package delivery service called Genie (taking on Dunzo), and just today, it has even begun delivering alcohol in India.
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