Amazon All Set to Enter into the Food Delivery Space?As if a battle between Zomato and Swiggy was not enough, another service may soon join the bandwagon of India's food delivery players

As if a battle between Zomato and Swiggy was not enough, another service may soon join the bandwagon of India's food delivery players

The battle between the foodtech unicorns is all set to intensify as Silicon Valley giant Amazon is reportedly planning to enter into the food delivery space with Prime Now.

Scaling Aggressive Growth

Amazon has been aggressive when it comes to business opportunities. After launching into the ecommerce market in India which is reportedly expected to grow up to $120 million in 2020, the global giant has teared up through intense competition to make a place for itself. It proved to be monstrous for homegrown brands and unicorns such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and even China-based Alibaba. Its growth did not just stop here.

In January 2016, the OTT platform Netflix entered the market and took the nation by storm. Scorning the market that the California-based video streaming platform was occupying, Amazon threw an arrow into the OTT market and disrupted it completely when it launched Amazon Prime, its own video-streaming services platform.

Amazon Prime turned out to be a big hit but its battle with Netflix continues till date. Even though the Indian OTT platform has become quite crowded with several homegrown brands such as Alt Balaji, Voot and Hotstar gaining immense popularity, Amazon Prime has managed to secure a comfortable place in the robust ecosystem.

A Strategic Move

Amazon is entering the foodtech or food delivery market at a crucial hour.

Currently, the Indian Food Services (Restaurants and Food Delivery) is a $50 billion industry. According to reports by Research & Market, the global food tech market is expected to explode beyond USD 250 billion by 2022. Investors, aware of the potential the food tech market holds are ready to shell huge amounts in food tech or food delivery start-ups. For instance Swiggy and Zomato, India's poster companies for food delivery are not just unicorns but are also established and dominant players in the market. UberEats failed to garner as much popularity as the unicorns. Infact, Amazon's online grocery platform Pantry failed to create a spark in the grocery delivery market with Bigbasket and Grofers still unmovable from their dominant positions.

But now, the spotlight is on Prime Now. Prime Now is, reportedly, in preliminary talks with cab-aggregator Ola for partnership with Foodpanda. There were also reports of it in talks for acquiring UberEats.

Prime Now will be Amazon's food and grocery delivery service. It is supposed to start its operations in 2020 with notable brands like Rebel Foods, Domino's, Eat.fit (Curefit's food service arm).