Quick commerce in India, explained for brands from abroad

Quick commerce is the way of shopping in India’s cities where an app delivers everyday things in minutes, from a dark store nearby. This guide explains how it works, which apps run it and what it means for a brand planning to launch in India, from what we read on the apps ourselves.

What it is

A shopper opens an app, which shows what the nearest dark store has, and orders. The app promises delivery in minutes: the typical promise at a store’s own address was 8 minutes on Blinkit and 6 minutes on Swiggy Instamart. The range runs from groceries, snacks and drinks to personal care, beauty, home goods, toys, electronics and medicines.

Dark stores

A dark store is a small warehouse that shoppers never walk into. Each serves the streets around it; an order is picked and packed there and ridden to the door. The app decides what each store stocks.

What one store’s address offers is far more than a corner shop holds. At the middle store of each app, the app listed at least 43,288 on Blinkit, 26,817 on Swiggy Instamart, 25,307 on Zepto, and 20,970 on BigBasket. Some of those are sent from larger warehouses nearby, but to the shopper it is one shelf.

The apps

The grocery apps sell groceries and much more: Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, Flipkart Minutes, BigBasket, Amazon Now and JioMart. Shelf reads the shelves of 11,234 of their stores in 984 cities, every day.

FirstClub, a members’ grocery app, is read too: all 34 of its ClubHouses in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, with a signed-in member account.

Other apps sell one kind of thing fast: fashion (Myntra M-Now, Slikk, ZILO, KNOT), beauty (Nykaa Now), pharmacy (Zepto Pharmacy, Plazza), pets (Supertails), baby and kids (OZi, Peeko) and food (Zepto Cafe, Bistro, Swish). What we read on each.

DMart Ready, DMart’s online shop, is read the same way. It delivers next day or in slots, not in minutes, so it is not quick commerce, and its figures are never added to the apps above. In all, Shelf reads 22 apps.

Each app is its own shelf. The same product can be listed in one app’s stores and missing from another’s, and nothing about one app can be read off another. Every figure Shelf shows is for one app, never added across apps.

Where it reaches

From the largest cities to much smaller ones: Shelf reads stores in 984 cities. Every dark store, city by city on a map, is on our sister site, quickcommercemap.com.

How shoppers find a product

With tens of thousands of products behind one address, shoppers search, and the first results get seen.

Part of the results page is paid: of the result slots, 4% to 36% were marked as sponsored, depending on the app (Amazon Now shows paid results only to signed-in shoppers). And when a shopper types a brand’s own name, another brand often holds a paid slot there: on Blinkit, on 81% of brand names, in five or more cities each.

For a launch, that means planning for search: the words shoppers type in your category, who ranks for them, and who holds the paid slots on them. Search intelligence · Ads intelligence

How prices are shown

Every pack sold in India carries an MRP, a maximum retail price printed on the pack that includes all taxes. The apps sell at or below it, and show both. In the categories of our pricing guide, the middle discount below MRP ran from 0% to 26%, depending on the app and the category. Prices on Shelf, and in these guides, are the prices the apps showed, GST included.

Pack sizes and price points, category by category

What it means for a launch

1. A listing is won app by app. Each app decides its range store by store, so being on one app says nothing about the next.
2. Stock is planned city by city. A store sells what has been sent to it, and the apps grow city by city too.
3. Search decides what is seen. Plan for the words of your category and for the paid slots on them.
4. Price for India, per 100 g. Small packs and set price points fill these shelves; a home price converted at the exchange rate rarely lands on one.
5. Read each app on its own. Never add apps together: a product on two apps is two listings.

How a foreign brand gets onto the apps

Words you will meet

Dark store

A small warehouse, closed to walk-in shoppers, that serves the streets around it.

MRP

Maximum retail price: printed on every pack sold in India, all taxes included. The apps sell at or below it.

GST

India’s goods and services tax. Prices shown to shoppers include it.

Lakh, crore

One lakh is 100,000 and one crore is 10 million. Indian figures are often grouped this way: 16,21,680 is 1,621,680, or about 16 lakh. On these pages a large count is rounded: 1.6 million.

SKU

One product in one pack size. The apps list each pack size separately.

FSSAI

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, the food regulator. Food sold in India needs its licence or registration.