A look at how Amazon delivers packages quickly to remote parts of India, such as Leh, by partnering with local companies
New York Times : Tweets: @refsrc , @ambermac , @puiwingtam , @govindethiraj , @juokaz , and @davehclark Tweets: Manish Singh / @refsrc : “Amazon may never make money shipping products by air to customers in Leh. But the idea is that profits from dense urban areas like Mumbai and Delhi will subsidize service to more remote ones.” http://www.nytimes.com/... Amber Mac / @ambermac : So apparently you can now get your #Amazon packages delivered 11,562 feet up in the Himalayas - wow! http://www.nytimes.com/... Pui-Wing Tam / @puiwingtam : There are no limits to Amazon's ambitions and logistics, as @vindugoel found in this lovely feature from Leh, Indiahttps://t.co/aOC0rPmjmU Govindraj Ethiraj / @govindethiraj : How residents of Leh, 11,562 feet up in the mountains, have become Amazon's highest altitude frequent customers: https://nyti.ms/2KBzlJ7 Juozas Kaziuknas / @juokaz : “Early each morning, the convenience of the digital age arrives, by way of a plane carrying 15 to 20 bags of packages from Amazon. At an elevation of 11,562 feet, Leh is the highest spot in the world where the company offers speedy delivery.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Dave Clark / @davehclark : there ain't no mountain high enough, Ain't no valley low enough, Ain't no river wide enough, To keep us from getting to you... I love this story... https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Leh story is one end of a logistics build-out Amazon was running across India that year: it had been constructing its own courier network while courting users and merchants in its battle with Walmart-backed Flipkart, per earlier coverage of its India operations and courier network. The economics are explicit — air freight to a town at 11,562 feet may never pay for itself, so dense metros like Mumbai and Delhi carry the load.
That cross-subsidy logic is the same one behind Amazon's push beyond the big cities more broadly: opening tiny stores, adding local-language descriptors, and accepting cash to reach the roughly 800M Indians living outside major metros, as covered in its tiny-store and cash-payment strategy. Leh is the visible proof point that no address is being written off.
First-order effects
- Local delivery companies gain steady contracted volume as Amazon's last-mile arm in terrain Amazon won't serve directly, making them dependent on Amazon's shipment flow.
- Amazon can now advertise reliable delivery to remote customers like Leh without owning the infrastructure, converting an unprofitable route into a marketing and Prime-retention asset.
Second-order effects
- Walmart's Flipkart faces pressure to match remote-India coverage or concede the non-metro market, since Amazon's partner model lets it expand reach without matching capital outlays.
- The partner-network approach travels: in the US, Amazon already delivers around 48% of its own packages and runs prep-center hubs like Roundup, Montana, so hybrid owned-plus-partner logistics becomes the template rather than an India workaround.
Third-order effects
- If urban-density-subsidized frontier delivery holds, e-commerce competition consolidates around whoever controls the full distribution chain — the direction Amazon's US footprint is already moving, with ~2.4M packages daily in New York City alone across a growing station network (NYC delivery-station expansion).
- Local carriers risk becoming commodity capacity inside Amazon's network, mirroring how the US Postal Service's package share fell as Amazon internalized delivery.
The trend: E-commerce leaders are internalizing the last mile market by market, using metro profits to fund coverage that no standalone carrier would price sustainably.