Amazon eyes first India offline store in Bengaluru

Bengaluru: Bengaluru is likely to get the world’s third offline or physical store from Amazon, the $89-billion world’s largest e-commerce player. According to sources close to the development, the company has initiated negotiations with realtors in the city.

The sources told that Amazon is scouting for a prominent location in Bengaluru, where its India operations are headquartered.

E-commerce pioneer and leader Amazon is no stranger to offline operations. In February this year, the company opened its first physical store in the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and called it a “customer order pickup and drop-off location”. Subsequently, it expanded operations to one more location in Purdue.

According to the company, the centres will allow Purdue students and others to collect



orders of textbooks as well as other goods, and make returns. While there are no products available for purchase at the pickup point, the two stores are viewed differently from other pickup points of Amazon at railway stations and post offices in Europe, and nearly 1,000 mom-and-pop stores in India, since the Purdue stores are directly managed and staffed by Amazon. Paul Ryder, Amazon vice-president of media and student programmes, has said the company planned to open more centres at other universities.

“We have received solid queries from the company to start a store in Bengaluru which is not yet finalised. The discussions are heading in a positive way and it will be clinched soon. Our company has been receiving queries from other top eCommerce players as well to start their offline stores in the city,” said the source.