Dive Brief:

• Amazon is running a pilot program to deliver packages by bicycle in India's biggest cities for distances of three to five kilometers. The program began in Mumbai last month, has been expanded to Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Chennai, and there are plans to expand it further.

• The move is meant to be eco-friendly and to entice more people to deliver for Amazon, considering that bicycles are more affordable than motorbikes, which many delivery companies in India use.

• Bicycles are seen as being able to more easily navigate the intense traffic in many busy Indian cities. Bicycle couriers will carry loads of up to 7.5 kg each trip, or about 16.5 pounds.

Dive Insight:

E-commerce is growing in India and could account for 3% of retail sales there by 2020, according to PwC. PwC also says that orders per million people in India are expected to more than double from five million in 2013 to 12 million by 2016.

In its bid to bolster delivery options in India, Amazon experimenting with bicycles as a major delivery vehicle in India’s busiest cities is part and parcel of the e-commerce giant's penchant for exploring every delivery means possible to improve its logistics at the lowest cost.

"In India, the density of population is higher, hence bicycles will help them reduce cost compared to [motorcycles]. Similarly, in the US, since the market is less dense, air cargos will help them reduce cost, reduce time and improve accuracy," Devangshu Dutta, CEO of consultancy Third Eyesight, told Economic Times. "The purpose is the same, how it is done is different, depending on the geography."

The retailer here has experimented with not just bicycles, but also newspaper couriers and crowd-sourcing deliveries, Uber-style. In recent years, the e-retail giant has also bought a fleet of trucks, leased jets, experimented with drones, and most recently registered as an ocean freight forwarding company with the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission.