E-commerce giant expands ultra-fast delivery service to 120+ Indian cities as Bhubaneswar joins the country’s rapidly growing quick-commerce network
By – Snigdha Mishra
Bhubaneswar: The race to deliver everything from groceries to everyday essentials within minutes has reached a new milestone in Odisha. Amazon has expanded its ultra-fast delivery service, Amazon Now, to Bhubaneswar, bringing the Odisha capital into the e-commerce giant’s rapidly expanding quick-commerce network.
Amazon Now has expanded to more than 120 cities across India, doubling its geographical footprint in just two weeks. Along with Bhubaneswar, the latest expansion covers cities including Amritsar, Abohar, Jalandhar, Ambala, Mangaluru, Manipal, Visakhapatnam, Kochi, Changanassery and Karwar.
The development is significant for Bhubaneswar as India’s quick-commerce competition increasingly moves beyond the largest metropolitan markets and into emerging urban centres.
Amazon’s ‘Delivery in Minutes’ Push Reaches Odisha
Amazon Now is designed around ultra-fast fulfilment, allowing customers to order from tens of thousands of products across categories such as groceries, fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen food, personal care, beauty, fashion, small appliances, and home and kitchen essentials.
The expansion is supported by a nationwide network of nearly 800 micro-fulfilment and urban fulfilment centres, which place inventory closer to consumers and enable substantially shorter delivery times.
For Bhubaneswar, Amazon Now’s arrival represents another step in the evolution of the city’s digital retail ecosystem. Consumers accustomed to traditional e-commerce delivery are increasingly being introduced to a model in which convenience is measured not in days, but in minutes.
Amazon Now Becomes a Billion-Dollar Business
Behind the aggressive expansion is strong growth in Amazon’s quick-commerce operation.
In September, Amazon said Amazon Now had reached $1 billion in annualised gross sales in India, based on the preceding three-month period.
Amazon also describes Now as the fastest-growing e-commerce business unit in Amazon India’s history, with orders doubling every quarter.
The scale-up therefore represents more than a logistical experiment. It signals Amazon’s determination to establish a substantial position in one of the most intensely contested segments of India’s digital-commerce market.
From 120 Cities to More Than 300
Amazon’s ambitions extend considerably beyond the current expansion.
The company plans to scale Amazon Now to customers in more than 300 Indian cities, as it works towards building what it describes as India’s largest “delivery-in-minutes” network.
Its wider fulfilment ecosystem also reflects a multi-speed strategy. While tens of thousands of products can be delivered within minutes or a few hours, Amazon says more than one million products can be delivered the same day and more than four million products the next day.
The combination of conventional e-commerce infrastructure with hyperlocal fulfilment could become one of Amazon’s biggest advantages as competition intensifies.
Bhubaneswar Enters India’s Quick-Commerce Battleground
The expansion into Bhubaneswar is particularly noteworthy because India’s quick-commerce story is no longer confined to Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and other major metros.
Platforms including Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart and Flipkart Minutes have already intensified competition around speed, product assortment, discounts and neighbourhood-level fulfilment.
Amazon Now brings the scale and supply-chain capabilities of one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies into that battle.
For Bhubaneswar, this growing competition could mean greater product availability, faster fulfilment and more choices for consumers. At the same time, it could create fresh competitive pressure for local retailers and existing delivery platforms as consumer expectations around convenience continue to change.
Odisha’s Consumer Market Gains Importance
Amazon’s decision to include Bhubaneswar in its rapid expansion also underlines the growing importance of emerging urban markets to India’s digital economy.
Bhubaneswar has steadily developed into an important eastern Indian centre for technology, education, startups, retail and services. The arrival of increasingly sophisticated digital-commerce models reflects the changing consumption patterns accompanying that growth.
Quick commerce is particularly dependent on dense demand clusters, local fulfilment infrastructure and consumers willing to pay—or shift platforms—for convenience. Expansion into cities such as Bhubaneswar therefore offers an important test of whether the model can scale sustainably beyond India’s largest metropolitan markets.
The Bigger Battle Is Just Beginning
Amazon’s expansion comes at a time when speed has emerged as one of the defining competitive factors in Indian e-commerce.
The company’s decision to double Amazon Now’s footprint within two weeks demonstrates how aggressively major platforms are pursuing the opportunity.
With Amazon targeting more than 300 cities and established quick-commerce companies continuing their own expansion, India’s next phase of e-commerce growth may increasingly be shaped not simply by what consumers can buy online, but how quickly it can reach their doorstep.
For Bhubaneswar, the arrival of Amazon Now places the city firmly within that evolving battle.
The larger story is therefore not merely about faster grocery delivery. It is about how India’s digital-commerce giants are looking beyond metros for their next phase of growth—and how cities such as Bhubaneswar are becoming increasingly important to that strategy.
Amazon Now’s entry into Odisha’s capital signals that India’s quick-commerce race has entered a new geography. The battle for the next generation of digital consumers is moving beyond the metros—and Bhubaneswar is now part of it.
