:

KOLKATARiding high on the big response coming from its e-grocery platform, Amazon India is planning big to set up its own “fully-integrated, farm-to-fork” direct online agri-product retailing and would look for getting required APMC (agricultural produce market committee) licences from the state governments. The e-market giant’s application to directly e-tail agri-products in India is pending with the DIPP, which was filed last month.“First, we are waiting for the DIPP nod. Once we get it, the next step would be to source agri-produce from the farmers. We are pinning hopes that we would get the required APMC (agricultural produce market committee) licence from the state governments. In foods business, our focus will be on efficient operations and looking after customer’s obsessions which would result in a positive impact on the overall supply chain with fast and reliable delivery,” Saurabh Srivastava, director (Consumables, FMCG) told TOI.The e-tail major is planning to build and innovate a logistics channel on the sourcing side. To begin with, it will start operations in 29 cities backed up by 27 company-owned warehouses across 10 states. In order to remove the cash-on-delivery (COD) hurdle, Amazon is also working on easing out the ‘fast order problem’ through cards.On whether Amazon’s entry to food retail business would hurt other newbies like BigBasket and Grofers, Srivastava said: “More organized players like us would only help the market expand. Food e-tailers have so far penetrated not even a fraction of India’s total agri-product sales. We want to change the customer’s perception with the growth of the ecosystem.”With an initial investment of $500 million (more than combined investment of BigBasket and Grofers), Amazon will become the first foreign retailer to enter the food e-tail segment. Last year, it invested majorly in marketing, technology and infrastructure, which led to gross a revenue of Rs 2,275 crore for 2016.Amazon India’s overall consumable business has grown 165% in 2016 over 2015. “And, it is the biggest and fastest-growing category by number of units sold on Amazon India,” added Srivastava. He was in the city to announce the launch of Amazon Pantry — a next-day delivery service of over 3,500 daily essentials belonging to 250 brands — in Kolkata. With this, the online retail giant has spread Amazon Pantry brand to 29 cities in India. The online retail giant expects the consumables category to be the growth driver in future for the retailer.“So far, 50% of our consumable business have come from tier-II and tier-III cities in India. We have got more contribution coming from the smaller cities as far as ‘ Amazon Subscribe and Save’ service is concerned. Now, the expansion is going to happen more in smaller cities,” Srivastava said.Amazon India has 19 lakh different products being sold by its 9,000 sellers on its online market place.