Amazon introduces Amazon Air in India for faster deliveries

Amazon on Monday launched Amazon Air in India in a bid to enhance the transportation network and facilitate faster deliveries.

The e-commerce giant plans to utilise full cargo capacity of a Boeing 737-800 plane and carry out deliveries in the cities of Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Delhi. Amazon has partnered with the Bengaluru-based cargo airline Quikjet to launch its maiden air freight service in the country.

This makes Amazon first e-commerce company in India to partner with a third-party carrier to provide a dedicated air network for deliveries.

“This launch will support 1.1 million sellers in India,” Akhil Saxena, Vice President – Customer  Fulfillment (APAC, MENA & LATAM), worldwide customer service, at Amazon said at the launch.

He also said, “We continue to invest in speed. We have invested in delivery infrastructure to strengthen the delivery network. This will help ship goods faster from our fulfillment centres to last-mile deliveries.”

However, this comes almost six years after Amazon Air was launched in the United States of America. Amazon Air was launched in 2016 in the U.S. with over three dozen Boeing freighter planes and then briefly tested in the UK as well. Interestingly, Amazon’s air cargo planes in India have been labelled as Prime Air which is a separate service by the e-commerce giant that provides deliveries using drones.

The launch was in Hyderabad in the presence of KT Rama Rao, Industry & Commerce Minister for Telangana.

This comes months after Amazon shut down three business units in the country – wholesale distribution Amazon Distribution, food delivery Amazon Food and its EdTech venture Academy in 2022 amid a global slowdown.

In India, Amazon faces direct competition from Walmart-backed Flipkart. 

On the global front, Amazon is going through rocky times like its peers as the global economy is staring at a recession. A Bloomberg report from last week suggested that the e-commerce giant is planning to fire employees in Human Resources (HR) and retail division. Other teams will also be impacted, but the details about these are scarce at the moment, the report added. Just recently, hundreds of thousands of hourly warehouse and delivery personnel were also fired by Amazon in the U.S.

Also read: Amazon layoffs continue as company plans to fire more employees from HR and other departments