Growth-hungry online retail giants look to tap Northeast

Infra investments aim to raise delivery efficiency despite geography and climate challenges

- Sakshi Sadashiv

Northeast is fast emerging as a promising e-commerce and quick commerce growth market as infrastructure improves and consumer demand rises steadily.

Once written off as too remote and costly to serve, the Northeast is emerging as India’s newest e-commerce consumption frontier.

With most market leaders having saturated the high-demand, easy-to-serve markets, large online retailers are testing whether rising consumption and improving connectivity can turn the region into a meaningful growth driver, as they race to cut losses.

Amazon has doubled down on faster deliveries in Assam, focusing on same-day and next-day deliveries, and has added “a new fulfilment centre, one sortation centre, and more than 50 delivery stations,” Saurabh Srivastava, vice president at Amazon India, told Mint. “These investments have enabled Amazon to deliver more than 2x more products (year-on-year), same and next day to Guwahati customers,” he added.