Bangalore: E-Commerce giant Amazon on Wednesday launched a grocery delivery app for customers in the city, taking domestic players such as Grofers, LocalBanya and PepperTap head on.


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The app, Amazon Now, will provide shoppers access to over 6,000 everyday essential items from local kirana stores and other grocery retail chains like BigBazaar, Reliance Fresh, Bharat Petroleum In & Out, Godrej Nature's Basket and Food World.


Customers can have the products delivered to their doorstep within 2 hours or at a pre-scheduled time, Amazon said in a statement.


"We are encouraged by the learnings from Kirana Now - a pilot that we started last year in Bangalore to enable customers to shop for their everyday essentials from the ecosystem of their local stores and get them delivered within two-four hours," Amazon India Vice President Category Management Samir Kumar said. Amazon has also enabled with two new delivery services -Express Delivery (two hours) and Scheduled Delivery offering.


The launch comes at a time when grocery delivery start-ups like Grofers and PepperTap are either shutting operations in certain cities or re-working on expansion plans to optimise costs.


According to analysts, grocery delivery may be a tricky area for eCommerce firms as retailers often operate on wafer-thin margins.