Amazon India is expanding its partnership with Indian Railways to enhance the speed and efficiency of customer package deliveries across the country. This collaboration, which has been pivotal in enabling 1-day and 2-day deliveries on millions of products, will continue to delight customers this festive season.
Under a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), Amazon India and Indian Railways will work together to identify and optimize hub-and-spoke networks, priority railway zones, and mega parcel hubs. The two entities aim to implement strategies that will ensure the efficient movement of packages from hubs to spokes. This partnership also includes the development of a hub-and-spoke model for a specific origin-destination pair, with the goal of scaling up this approach across the rail network. The plan covers various aspects, including first and last-mile requirements, transit times, cost options, and policy enablers, all designed to boost parcel volumes on Indian Railways.
Amazon’s engagement with Indian Railways has grown significantly, with the number of active rail lanes used to ferry customer packages increasing fivefold over the past two years. This expansion has enabled faster deliveries, even in remote parts of the country. The partnership aligns with the Indian government’s vision of ‘Viksit Bharat and Viksit Rail,’ promoting multimodality and using the rail network as an economical and sustainable mode of transportation.
Ravinder Goyal, Member (Operations and Business Development) of the Railway Board, commended,”I encourage e-commerce sector to leverage the efficiency and sustainability of rail transport to streamline their logistics needs. Indian Railways has launched many parcel services as well as the Virtual Aggregation Platform (VAP) to ease and encourage adoption of rail for parcel delivery and I therefore appeal to the e-commerce business to use this facility for mutual gain.”
Amazon India has been a pioneer in leveraging Indian Railways for e-commerce logistics. In 2019, the company became the first to use the railway network to ensure fast and reliable deliveries, starting with parcel wagons on the Rajdhani Express route between Mumbai and Delhi. Since then, there has been a 15-fold increase in the movement of Amazon parcels through railway lanes. In 2023, Amazon India further strengthened its association by becoming the first e-commerce logistics company to utilize Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs). These corridors are designed to decongest the existing rail network, increase the average speed of freight trains, enable heavy haul train operations, link ports and industrial areas, and reduce overall logistics costs. By 2024, Amazon India’s operations had grown from using one train in 2019 to over 120 trains, covering 130 intercity routes across 91 unique destination cities.
Abhinav Singh, Vice President of Operations at Amazon India, highlighted that “Our association with the Indian Railways aligns with the government’s vision to leverage this iconic institution for India’s economic growth. It also reflects our focus on providing our customers across India access to unparalleled selection with fast and reliable deliveries.”
To meet evolving customer needs, Amazon India continues to strengthen its selection of items available for same-day and next-day delivery. Prime members in India can enjoy free, unlimited same-day delivery on over 1 million items and next-day delivery on over 4 million items available on Amazon.in.
