Amazon Food, the New Challenger: Growth Issues and Drivers - A Case Study

The Indian food delivery market was expected to grow seven fold in the next seven years from $ 1 billion in 2018 to $ 7 billion by FY 25, according to Goldman Sachs. There was a high potential in this relatively untapped market. Major players were Zomato, Swiggy and Foodpanda (Ola-owned) and now possibly ‘Amazon food’. Amazon India had launched its food delivery service, ‘Amazon Food’, in select pin codes of Bengaluru. Amazon’s foray into the food delivery market could create new challenges for Prosus Ventures-backed Swiggy, and Zomato; latter an 11-year-old startup that acquired Uber Eats’ business in India in January this year, and Google-backed Dunzo, which operated in Bangalore and counted food delivery as one of the biggest parts of its business. The growth drivers were convenience, ease of ordering, live tracking, increasing penetration of smartphones and the growing number of working women in India. It was estimated that there were more than one hundred thousand restaurants delivering foods through online food ordering platforms across India. Home cooking had become rare. Even if one did not go out to eat, one got precooked meals with ease. Consumers were benefited by easy and convenient tool to avail value discounts. Restaurants got benefited by increased business margins absent in dine ins. Food delivery players got benefited by sales commission from the restaurant. In today’s competitive market environment, ‘Amazon food’, would be continuously forced to improve their marketing strategies. The four A’s–accessibility, affordability, assortment and ability had the propensity to take away the reason to cook at home. The case examined how the performance levels could enhance efficiency and productivity of the Amazon Food Online delivery brand.