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Amazon Is Pushing Grocery Shopping With Innovations In India And Abroad

Amazon likely to launch grocery stores in India soon.
Abhishek Chinnappa / Reuters

Amazon is one of the most fast-paced innovators in the world. From Artifical Intelligence platform in Alexa to cloud services through Amazon Web Services (AWS). Still, the core strength of the company lies in making the shopping experience better for the customer. One of the areas it is making a push is grocery shopping.

The company today announced Amazon Fresh Pickup in the US. A service for customers where they can pre-shop their list and pick up from the designated locations or stores. There are two spots in Seattle at the moment where an employee would be waiting for your items in the bags to deliver it to your car.

A recent report in New York Times stated that the company is looking to open brick and mortar grocery stores in India. It notes that under the codename 'Project Everest' Amazon is going to open a store in Bengaluru soon.

"We are excited by government's continued efforts to encourage FDI in India for a stronger food supply chain. We have sought an approval to invest and partner with the government in achieving this vision," Amazon said in an email statement replying to the query from HuffPost India.

Amazon has already launched Amazon Now in India. An app from where people can order products of daily use from big outlets and malls. The service is available in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi NCR and Hyderabad at the moment. One of the unique things promised by the service is guaranteed 2-hour delivery.

Right now in India, BigBasket is the only big player in the market in India as PepperTap has shut down and Grofers have shrunk their operations. Flipkart is also planning to jump back into this sector after shutting down the Nearby app in February 2016. According to a report from Business Standard, Amazon is set to pump in $515 million in in India in the food retail category.

Outside of India Amazon's ambitious project Amazon GO is also in the pipeline. A dream store where people can just walk in add items to their carts and walk out without waiting for queues. All the payments are handled by mobile. According to the recent reports, the project has been delayed due to the technical issues.

The e-commerce giant has also had hardware products to make shopping from home easy. Dash Wand which scans the barcodes and adds the products directly to your cart was launched in 2014. It also accepts voice command as well.

It has also launched Dash button which can be configured to add a specific product and quantity on pressing the button to the cart. The user has half an hour to cancel the order, otherwise, the product is delivered at the doorstep of the user.

The company is also getting really closer to turn the drone delivery into reality from experiments and fiction. The company delivered a bottle of sunscreen to a pre-decided site. Amazon Prime Air's aim is to put the product into the customer's hand within 30 minutes.

Amazon's AI assistant Alexa is one the most talked product these days. Amazon has added shopping capabilities to the platform so the consumers can add items to the cart just by a voice command. The company is making a huge push for including it in phone, refrigerators, speakers and more. This step would open up more avenues for the company to pitch its shopping services as well.

Back home the company is doing really well in the competition with Flipkart. But now it has been looking to invest in more verticals such as entertainment with Amazon Prime Video and grocery with the stores and Amazon Now app. The company is placing the country as one of the most important markets for the future and investing heavily to be on top of every sector.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.