With its Prime members contributing a third of its shoppers, Amazon India says it is is heavily investing in the country to enable faster deliveries.

Akhil Saxena, Vice-President - India Customer Fulfilment, Amazon, told BusinessLine: “Out of every order we ship, the third is a Prime order, and we have seen a huge jump in our Prime membership in the last six months.” Saxena did not divulge any specific numbers to quantify the growth in Prime membership.

Amazon Prime is a subscription-based programme that the e-tailer launched in July last year at ₹499 per year. It allows customers to opt for next-day free delivery, exclusive striking deals and many other offers. However, according to sources, the membership has seen a substantial jump only in the last six months after the company launched Prime Video last December.

Saxena said the growing customer base has given the company a lot of confidence to to invest heavily in getting closer to the consumers in India, and hence it is innovating to come out with localised and India-specific solutions to provide faster delivery and enhance customer experience.

The company, which competes head on with home-grown arch rival Flipkart, said initiaves such as Service Partner Network (where individuals or small businesses act as exclusive courier partner for Amazon) and ‘I Have Space’ (where kirana stores use extra space for Amazon deliveries) are India-specific and has witnessed “overwhelming” response from smaller towns.

The Indian arm of global e-commerce giant Amazon.com, which has committed about $5 billion to the Indian market, plans to end this year with about 41 fulfilment centres (FC) across 13 States. The firm on Tuesday launched its sixth FC in Mumbai and eighth in Maharashtra.

Saxena further added that the launch of grocery business and large appliances and furniture has also led to a huge demand in need of FCs. The company has nine FCs dedicated only for large and bulky products.

“The new FC will enable thousands of small and medium businesses to save money.”