San Francisco, May 14 (IANS): In an attempt to help its US-based employees quit their jobs and establish their own businesses, Amazon has announced to fund employees with up to $10,000 for their delivery start-ups along with three months of existing salaries.

In June 2018, the company announced that it is encouraging its employees to apply to start their own small businesses, delivering Prime packages in Amazon-branded vans and uniforms.

The company said that although thousands of employees expressed interest in the programme, most of them said they could not afford the start-up money they needed to get the businesses off the ground.

"We received overwhelming interest from tens of thousands of individuals who applied to be part of the 'Delivery Service Partner' programme, including many employees. We've heard from associates that they want to participate in the programme but struggled with the transition," CNN quoted Dave Clark, Senior Vice President of worldwide operations at Amazon, as saying on Monday.

According to the company, ever since it started the delivery service, there have been more than 200 independent contractors who signed up to handle the deliveries. Between them, they have hired thousands of local drivers to deliver the packages.

The e-commerce giant recently announced implementing its one-day Prime delivery decision, which was traditionally a two-day window. In 2019, the company plans to add hundreds more delivery contractors, including the former employees who take up the offer, the report added.

Amazon has been trying to gear up an independent delivery service to handle packages now going to companies like FedEx as well as the Postal Service.