Online retail giant Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has launched Prime Now in Singapore, marking the conglomerate's first foray into Southeast Asia with the rapid delivery service. 

The service offers free two-hour deliveries for a large range of products including groceries.

“We are excited to introduce the busy people in Singapore to this convenient, ultra-fast delivery solution to get more time back to do the things they love,” said Prime Now Asia-Pacific director Aarif Nakhooda.

“Prime Now is powered by Amazon’s more than 20 years of operational and technological excellence and hundreds of Singapore’s talented and skilled associates.”

Singapore Economic Development Board managing director Kiren Kumar said Amazon would leverage data and technology to achieve greater resource efficiency.

“With Prime Now, Amazon will also play a key role in training and equipping our local ecosystem and workforce with cross-disciplinary digital capabilities," he said.

"This is an excellent example of a global technology company contributing to Singapore’s ambition to be a Smart Nation and a location for businesses to innovate and create new value for the world.”

Prime Now is an exclusive service for members of Amazon Prime, a membership program to launch in Singapore soon with additional benefits to come.

For a limited time, Prime Now will be available in Singapore to try without a Prime membership.

Since launching in December 2014 in New York, Prime Now has expanded to more than 50 cities in nine countries including Berlin, London, Madrid, Rome and Tokyo.

The announcement comes the same week as Amazon boss Jeff Bezos was reported to have become the richest man in the world, after the multinational's share's rose.

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