On Wednesday, Amazon India announced that it has tied up with the Indian Railways in a pilot programme to make inter-city delivery of e-commerce packages.

In a press release, the company said that it would be transporting customer packages via railway on three routes-New Delhi to Mumbai, Mumbai to New Delhi and New Delhi to Kolkata.

Amazon said that it has seen improvement in speed for ground transportation of its packages and increased reliability for packages transported through the railway network. It is the first time an e-commerce transportation product has been built for freight transport via rail it said.

"The reach and speed of the Indian Railways will further help us fulfill customer orders faster and reliably across the country," Abhinav Singh, Amazon India director (Middle Mile Transportation) said.

"We are committed to a long-term partnership with the Indian Railways, and are excited to partner with them to build freight movement solutions for the e-commerce industry, leveraging the vast railway network, based on the learnings from our pilot programme," he said.

In the last month, Indian Railways partnered with Amazon India for a pilot project to set up pickup kiosks in four railway stations across Mumbai.