Join a package in its journey as it travels across India's iconic locations

Have you ever wondered how far your package travels to reach you? How it is so easy to deliver gifts to your loved ones who stay miles away? Here we share the journey of your festive gift box of love, lovingly chosen and ordered from Amazon.in, packaged and dispatched with care at our network facilities and delivered to you by our fleet of associates and partners across India. Hold on tight as we begin our joy ride through the wide avenues and winding alleyways of India’s many cities and towns…

Nestled in the heart of Rajasthan is Amazon seller, MH Art Deco, who graduated from offline to online selling primarily due to the ease of doing business on Amazon. The accomplished craftsmen at MH Art Deco create inimitable pieces of furniture, such as dining tables, coffee tables and cabinets, among many more. Since joining Amazon, it has enriched its business immensely as a result of the higher number of orders from the online platform. They have since expanded their team of 15 to 40, accelerated their business and set up two new factories to catering to their customers across the country. With timely payments in place, they have had the opportunity to focus on their work and build a brighter future.

Photo by karan

Hari Krishna has been working at Amazon’s Hyderabad facility for the last three years. He is a skilled cricketer who has represented India in national and international tournaments. Due to his family circumstances, however, earning a living had to take precedence over his cricketing career. Happily though, Hari found the opportunity to work as an associate at the facility in Hyderabad. One of the centre’s most admired associates, not only is he a star performer at work, but he has also begun to pursue his sports dreams.

Anita lives in Mulund, Mumbai, and owns a clothing store called A1 Collection. She lives with her mother and son. As the sole breadwinner of her family, she once struggled to make ends meet. Ever since she enrolled herself as an ‘I Have Space’ (IHS) partner with Amazon back in 2014, however, life began to look up.

“The IHS programme has completely changed our lives. I can manage my household expenses with ease now. Initially, people from my community would ask me about my experience of making deliveries as a woman. I would tell them about how Amazon ensures a safe environment for its women associates and how it motivates women like me to work across the network and earn our living,” she says.

Photo by Mayank Soni

In 2017, Amazon set up its own delivery service in Leh by contracting with a local adventure guide company to make deliveries throughout the rugged mountain town — making it the company’s highest elevation delivery route. For townspeople, basic things which once seemed extremely difficult to get are now easily available, and they say this faraway place feels a lot more connected.

“My wife is eight months pregnant and we were looking for this pregnancy pillow. We couldn't find it in the whole Leh city,” said Sonam Rinchen, who runs Amazon’s small but mighty delivery station in Leh. “Through Amazon, we got the pregnancy pillow within two, three days.”

Some of the delivery routes aren’t on a map, and Amazon has relied on the local knowledge of the delivery people who grew up in the area to find customers’ homes. The routes not only involve high mountain passes and occasional rock slides, but rough, primitive roads and sporadic traffic jams caused by free-roaming cattle and donkeys. Rinchen said his team of drivers love the new opportunity and have made surprising connections with people along the way.

Adarsh Rathore runs a small DJ business and lives with his family in Lucknow. The nature of his profession never allowed him a steady income. As the sole breadwinner of his family, he often struggled to run his household. So when Adarsh learnt about Amazon’s IHS programme through a friend in 2017, he enrolled into it. He was happy to earn Rs.12,000-15,000 every month.

“The IHS program has transformed my life. I now have a regular job with fixed timings that helps to balance my personal and professional lives. My neighbourhood customers also recognise me and feel happy when I deliver their packages,” says Adarsh.

S. Kiran Kumar Singh is the owner of SDP Transport and has a fleet of 40 trucks. Kiran lives with his family in Bangalore. His father and uncle are former military servicemen who worked in the transportation of military goods and taught him how to drive. In 2015, a family crisis led Kiran to take over his father’s business and become a truck driver.

Kiran drove trucks for Amazon India for a year before saving enough to buy his first truck. This was when he learnt about the need for a long-haul vehicle on Amazon’s network. He enrolled as a partner with Amazon, and today runs the business with his family, employing nearly 40 truck drivers. “Initially, I did not know how to operate a heavy vehicle, but since my father and uncle were expert truck drivers I knew I had it in my blood,” says Kiran.

Under the Kudumbashree programme, women in Kerala who make products as varied as grocery items, home and fashion accessories have access to a wider market via Amazon Saheli. These women entrepreneurs who sell their wares[SB1] , handmade or procured, primarily in local markets are often faced with unpredictable demands and logistical challenges. These are the concerns that the Amazon Saheli team addressed when they stepped in to train the women entrepreneurs of Kudumbashree, continuing to support them through seamless onboarding assistance, introducing them to imaging and cataloguing, product listing, subsidised referral and free account management. Despite the COVID-19 setbacks and lockdown, Kudumbashree has registered over 3X growth in revenues during 2020 over 2019. With Amazon Saheli, these women entrepreneurs are now charting their path towards financial independence and building their own careers.

In a society where any conversation around menstrual hygiene is still bare minimum and often considered a taboo, Tanvi Johri decided to take a huge step by starting Carmesi in 2017. She came up with the idea of safe, eco-friendly and sustainable all-natural sanitary napkins, and thus a brand for feminine hygiene products was born. Initially, Carmesi faced tough challenges when it was first launched online. To tackle them, she enrolled with Amazon, which opened opportunities for her and enabled her to gain valuable insights about the true potential of her product on the Amazon marketplace. Today, while Amazon.in showcases her products to the world, Tanvi has more time to work on her core business, allowing her to plan her business better and increase its potential.

Mr. Devasish Ghosh is an example of a serviceperson turned entrepreneur from Amazon’s network in Kolkata. In 2015, he took a plunge into entrepreneurship by starting his own company, D. G. Logistics. This was when Amazon also starting out in Kolkata, and Mr. Ghosh became quickly associated with Amazon India. He began with a small station to service three pin codes with an approximate population of 200 thousand and an almost equal mix of residential and commercial addresses.

The station currently services nine pin codes and handles almost 7,000 packages every day. It has consistently been one of Amazon’s best stations across the network. He says, “My wife and I continue to spend just as much time at our station as we used to five years ago, celebrating all our successes with our team as a family!”