5 Quick Commerce Innovators Leading the Way
As a consumer in the modern 21st-century world, one must have heard about same-day delivery. But how much do all know about even quicker deliveries courtesy of quick commerce? Among the most trending, disrupting phenomena in this ever-emerging and bursting world of retail and e-commerce is the sudden rise of quick commerce in India. The dramatic and transformational model has reshaped the landscape of retail and last-mile delivery by leveraging the power of mobile internet and a booming e-commerce sector. Quick commerce redefines shopping experiences at the heart of this increasingly sought-after lightning-fast delivery system challenging traditional retail.
Started with instant meal deliveries, it has now grown rapidly into an integrated service that is delivering groceries, medicines, cosmetics, electronics, and many more. The disruptive idea combines comfort shopping from home with immediacy, like store purchases, to meet the greater demand for fresh produce and household items. Quick commerce has reached a point where it leads the market transformation driven by the convenience, urbanization, and time-strained lifestyle of today's consumers. The competition among business players works toward reducing delivery times as shoppers seek quicker delivery, thereby unlocking a new era of retail.
Is Quick Commerce the Future of Instant Shopping?
Grocery shopping has just taken on a new dimension, where it is possible to do this within minutes from the comfort of one's home. Till someone came up with sub-10-minute home deliveries, nobody gave any credence to superfast home deliveries. Comparatively, past home delivery services taking all of 15 to 20 minutes were counted as quick; it seemed impossible for any home delivery service to achieve anything less than this because of city traffic.
But this was an innovation that proved otherwise. Essentials started reaching doorsteps in less than 10 minutes, and the retail shop within a 5-minute walking distance almost went into unconsciousness. Those days of dressing up, walking to the store, and shopkeeper talks were replaced by the era of convenience.
Companies like Zepto, Dunzo, Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit and BigBasket join this revolution, promising ultra-fast delivery. In fact, using hyper-local logistics, wide networks of dark stores within residential areas, and advanced technology, these platforms ensure rapid fulfillment that actually consumers enjoy.
Zepto
Headquartered in Mumbai, Zepto is the quickest e-grocery player in India, now operating in 10 major cities while promising less-than-10-minute delivery for over 5,000 SKUs, from fresh produce to household essentials. Famed for its high-tech capabilities, along with a sufficient number of delivery networks, Zepto had been disruption-seeding into the $600 billion Indian grocery market and has recently begun selling items typically sold at cafes alongside groceries. The company is all set to roll out early access to its own BNPL service called Zepto Postpaid, currently on its waitlist inside the Zepto app. Zepto Postpaid will offer interest-free repayments of up to Rs 5,000.
Dunzo
Dunzo is an Indian hyperlocal delivery app which delivers anything from groceries, food, medicine, and pet supplies from the nearest stores to one's doorstep. Alongside its core delivery services, Dunzo provides other services, such as bike taxis, home services, and running personal errands. It operates in 8 cities across India like Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai. The application is available on iOS and Android. More than 400,000 registered merchants and delivery partners are on this platform. Dunzo guarantees delivery in less than 45 minutes. It has been able to achieve a 97% on-time delivery rate. Their safety measure is focusing on compulsory temperature checks, sanitization of delivery fleets at regular intervals, and contactless delivery.
Swiggy Instamart
Swiggy Instamart, the on-demand grocery delivery platform from India's leading food delivery platform Swiggy, includes everything, from fresh produce to household essentials and personal care products. This is offered within 15-30 minutes of order placement. Instamart works by functioning through a network of small warehouses located tactically across major cities, ensuring ease and efficiency in grocery shopping by the urban consumer. Instamart scales rapidly to more and more cities on the demand rise for q-commerce across the Indian market by leveraging the already existing logistics infrastructure and delivery fleet of Swiggy.
Blinkit
Blinkit, formerly Grofers, is an Indian e-grocer that promises to change the game of quick commerce with its guarantee of delivery in only a few minutes. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Gurugram, Blinkit now operates in more than 23 cities, delivering daily essentials with just a tap on the app. Blinkit has set ambitious plans for growth-100x in five years. It is also the subject of much debate with the 10-minute delivery promise. While being at the receiving end of a lot of criticism, the fast-growing service Blinkit focuses on convenience and efficiency in e-retail.
BigBasket
Bigbasket pioneered online grocery delivery over a decade ago in India and has emerged as the country's largest online grocery store. It operates today in more than 300 cities and towns across the country, offering about 100,000 products. Amidst the rising demands for safety, hygiene, and contactless transactions, Bigbasket comes up with bbinstant-a service with thousands of vending machines across major cities. These vending machines allow customers to buy their daily grocery items at any time, without any human contact. As bbinstant continues to expand its network, Bigbasket is in the process of creating an ecosystem for easier and effortless grocery shopping in India.
Why Do People Even Need Their Groceries Within Less Than 10 Minutes?
A first use case for quick commerce was the sudden craving. Sitting at home, hungry, and opening the refrigerator to find nothing tempting inside. A sudden need for something to snack on comes up, and the customer will pay a premium to have that delivered as fast as possible. This was the first, and often ideal, customer base for quick commerce. Being the only use case, quick commerce players may not see much growth in this. This is a need that is relatively infrequent and often small in order size, maybe small enough not to see quick commerce companies through for any great length of time.
I guess almost this would be the reason that people experiencing it!
Winding It Up!
Quick commerce, which essentially means delivery of items to customers within a time frame that is really very short, increasingly seems to be one of the major driving forces in India's retail landscape. Though the concept of quick commerce has gone through various challenges and setbacks in several global markets, it has turned out to be nothing short of a miracle in the case of India.
