Trends Shaping Quick Commerce in India

Quick will eat all Indian commerce! Marc Andreessen said, "Software will eat the world" in the 2000s to suggest how big the software opportunity really was and how we were at the start of a megatrend! Similarly, based on the extreme habit forming around quick commerce in India, it is apt to wonder if "Quick will eat all Indian commerce". The pace of adoption of quick commerce and the intensity of PMF (one of our founders said they often end up ordering groceries "after" their cook shows up!!!) may be almost as strong as UPI. Everyone who has experienced "quick commerce" is not going back. We are seeing this across categories - while it started with groceries, the response to "quick" in food, fashion, beauty, and even construction material has been telling...all based on real data. Timing may be an important factor here - we are more ready to cost-effectively deliver the "quick" experience than we have ever been. For example, Yulu, which delivers India's most durable & most cost-effective unit of EV mobility, powers crores of "quick rides" every month and has the full-stack capacity in place to scale it! Blitz started building their last-mile infrastructure for brands two years ago and is ready to cater to the "quick demand". Wherehouse, similarly, started two years ago and has everything in place for powering another piece of this infrastructure. These are just our portcos - am sure there are others I don't know who are building other pieces of this puzzle! Slikk is delivering curated fashion in 60 minutes all over Bangalore. In HSR, Swish is delivering fresh food in 10 mins. Cital is pioneering "quick" in construction material that was never imagined before. Incumbents are racing to figure out their "quick" strategy almost as frenetically as software incumbents adding AI copilots! A lot is up in the air though. How will this all pan out? What will brands do? How quickly will incumbents cannibalize their e-commerce stores for a quick commerce strategy? Who will deliver? How will returns work? Non-EV logistics are unlikely to work from an economics perspective - so the question is how fast and large can Yulu scale? What are other solutions? Will quick commerce stack be fully vertically integrated OR will it be fully disaggregated and federated? Will Yulu publish its capacity (demand and supply) on ONDC for riders to pick it up for a win-win-win? How will vertical quick commerce players create differentiated supply chains and customer experiences? All fun stuff -- but the time is now. It's all happening now and those building at the edge are learning fast and iterating to build a stack that will power the "Quick India Movement" as I call it. ....or I am completely wrong here :) Time will tell. For now, we are all-in and will share more as we learn.

It is fascinating to experience #QuickCommerce in India - with 10 min delivery becoming a norm, consumer apps like Blinkit are setting global benchmarks for scale, speed and customer obsession. I just got back from a big fat, destination wedding in India - the wedding ecosystem is itself worthy of analysis - more on that in a later post. However, it was incredible to experience & understand the dynamics involved in near real time fulfillment of any and every product need - and in cities beyond metros in India. From grocery to electronics, from single item to bulk orders - no matter the price of the product, no matter what time of the day you need it at - you #BlinkIt and get the item(s) delivered within 10 minutes. 🛍️ I got a bunch of safety pins delivered at one time, an assortment of beverages at another - at 2 am! During the course of the day, I heard "let's blinkIt" several times ... reminiscing my days from 2 decades back in India when only a house-help's name could be heard as many times - with the exception that with BlinkIt, items needed would be reliably received within 10 minutes! 📊 Zomato purchased Blinkit in 2022 in a strategic move - expanding its already popular hyperlocal food delivery service to grocery(+) delivery. India's inherent economy built on high market density and population of riders - enabled with technology & mobile-first consumers make it lucrative to establish and scale hyper-local, near real-time fulfillment that is difficult to replicate in more advanced markets like the USA (where Amazon is barely able to meet same day deliveries). Specially, the large gig workforce enabled with efficient tracking tools & access to dark stores within a small range - creates a robust last-mile delivery network. The rise of quick commerce in India is a classic example that shows what’s possible when infrastructure comes together in a high-density, mobile-first economy. I remain curious to see how this plays out as monetization and scale catch up - given these services are still operating at loss. 💰 Revenue (Q4 FY24): ₹769 Cr, up 2x YoY 🛒 65.3M orders in Q4, with 89,000 active riders 🕑 Average delivery time: ~10-15 minutes 🏬 Store count: 526 dark stores, serving 26 cities 💲 AOV: ₹617 (~$7.40), up 18% YoY Would love to hear from others - if you have experienced these services and what's your take on it.

Today, as Swiggy becomes India’s second quick commerce IPO, I can’t help but think back to March 22, 2020—the first day of India’s lockdown. I was glued to our order dashboard, watching in shock as volumes dropped by nearly 90%. They remained at that level for months. It was an existential crisis - survival was uncertain, and profitability felt like a distant dream. Fast forward to today: quick commerce is set to reach $40 billion in market cap on the Indian public market by 2030. Zomato is showing profitability. Zepto could soon become one of the fastest-growing companies globally to go public. All this, in less than a decade. What's even more remarkable? The quick commerce business model is uniquely suited to India – delivering anything and everything in 10 minutes, from burgers to iPhones. Here in the US, DoorDash and Instacart represent $80B+ in market cap but are nowhere close to the convenience and delight that their Indian counterparts offer. What makes this possible? 1. India's high population density makes the first-mile and last-mile dynamics ideal for quick commerce. 2. Labor costs are low; the cost per delivery is around $1, while the average order value is $7. 3. India has one of the youngest populations globally, with a median age of 28 years. Young consumers are tech-savvy and crave for instant gratification, preferring services that offer maximum convenience. 4. Unlike in Western markets, big-box retailers are less prevalent in India. India relies heavily on small-format neighborhood stores, or kiranas, which account for ~75-78% of the grocery retail market. The kirana model is highly fragmented, which quick commerce platforms can replace with added convenience and speed. India's quick commerce model has proven so compelling that it’s growing faster than horizontal e-commerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon. I won’t be surprised if quick commerce takes over horizontal e-commerce in the coming years. I feel proud to see where Swiggy is today. One of the best decisions I made was to join Swiggy as a 21-year-old and be surrounded by the absolute rockstar team that Sriharsha and Phani assembled. Can't wait to see the heights they scale. Long Swiggy, long quick commerce, long India! P.S. - this picture is from my first day at Swiggy. Tried building the delivery partner bag using paper - nowhere close to the intricately designed ones today :)