Amazon is preparing for a major expansion of its quick-commerce service, Amazon Now, with plans to take the service to more than 300 cities across India. The expansion is expected to focus heavily on smaller cities, including Jaipur, Bhopal, Indore and Lucknow.

Instead of relying entirely on newly built dark stores, Amazon plans to use existing More Retail stores as online order fulfilment centres. This approach could allow the company to expand its delivery network more quickly while keeping infrastructure costs under control.

More stores to become fulfilment centres

Amazon Now is already operating in 35 cities using this model. According to the company, around 75–80% of its fulfilment points in these cities are existing More Retail stores.

These stores effectively serve two purposes. Customers can continue shopping from them physically, while Amazon Now can use their inventory to process and deliver online orders.

The current network includes cities such as Warangal, Karimnagar, Tirupati, Guntur, Amritsar, Kochi, Manipal, Bhubaneswar and Tiruvannamalai.

Why Amazon is targeting smaller cities

India's quick-commerce market has traditionally been concentrated in major urban centres. However, smaller cities are increasingly becoming an important growth opportunity.

Expanding into these markets isn't easy because order volumes can be lower, average order values may be smaller, and delivery costs can be higher.

Despite these challenges, Amazon says Amazon Now orders have been growing by around 20–25% month-on-month in recent months. The company also says orders are doubling every quarter, although it has not disclosed its overall order volume or gross merchandise value.

Target of more than 300 cities

Amazon India announced in June that it plans to expand Amazon Now to more than 300 cities.

To support this expansion, Amazon plans to build:

• More than 1,000 micro fulfilment centres
• More than 100 large urban fulfilment centres

The company currently has over 600 micro fulfilment centres and says it is adding approximately two new centres every day.

Larger fulfilment centres planned

Amazon is also increasing the capacity of its larger facilities. The planned large urban fulfilment centres are expected to hold approximately four times more products than existing Amazon Now centres.

This could allow Amazon to offer a broader selection while serving customers across larger urban areas.

The company expects to cross the 300-city milestone within the next few quarters, while simultaneously increasing its presence in cities where Amazon Now already operates.

If the expansion progresses as planned, shoppers in cities such as Jaipur, Bhopal, Indore and Lucknow could get access to Amazon's faster delivery service without Amazon having to build an entirely new network of dark stores from scratch.