Amazon's India unit on Tuesday said that it has temporarily stopped orders for non-essential products in India, as the country went under lockdown for three weeks. Also, Coca Cola said that it has suspended production at its plants in India as the country continues its fight to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Businesses have comes to a standstill in India following the spread of the virus over the past couple of weeks. On Tuesday, the country officially was put under lockdown till April 14, as more cases of coronavirus continue to be reported from the country.
Amazon prioritizes sale of essential goods
The e-commerce giant on Tuesday said that it was temporarily discontinuing accepting orders for "lower priority" products, while at the same time prioritizing selling urgent items like household staples, medical and healthcare products and personal safety products. The company had taken a similar decision of not shipping non-essential products in countries like Italy and France, which have completely shattered by the virus outbreak.
The company in a blog post said, "To serve our customers' most urgent needs while also ensuring safety of our employees, we are temporarily prioritizing our available fulfilment and logistics capacity to serve products that are currently critical for our customers such as household staples, packaged food, health care, hygiene, personal safety and other high priority products." The company didn't specify a timeline for resumption of normal services.
Coca Cola, Pepsi's India bottling partner suspend production
Coca Coca said that it has suspended production at all its manufacturing units in India, as the country geared up for a bigger and tougher fight to contain the spread of the virus and went under a three-week-long lockdown. However, the company said it will operate its manufacturing facilities in a very small number to provide just essential services like packaged water.
Also, Coca Cola's biggest rival, PepsiCo's India bottling partner, Varun Beverages, said that it has closed down all its corporate offices and plants in India. India has reported more than 500 cases of coronavirus till late Tuesday, with 10 resulting in deaths.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on late Tuesday announced that a three-week-long lockdown was necessary to make an attempt to break the chain of the virus and to contain its spread. Modi's move, which goes into effect from March 25 midnight, comes as nearly every Indian state has imposed a lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
