“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack jump over the candlestick”
Who would have imagined this early 19th century nursery rhyme was actually about the Indian quick commerce (q-commerce) scenario in 2024?
Just joking, of course. But it isn’t hard to see the connection. If the ‘candlestick’ is e-commerce, with its “Thank you, your item is shipped and scheduled to arrive on blah blah” promise, quick commerce is the ‘right here, right now’ Jumping Jackflash (apologies to the Rolling Stones).
Speaking of e-commerce, the mighty Amazon did a series of cool promotional videos making fun of q-commerce just a few months back. The Bollywood actor Manoj Bajpayee, playing a middle-class Ghanshyam, demonstrated how silly the idea of q-comm was.
Not any more. Now news articles about Amazon have surfaced, claiming the giant is planning to enter the space, currently dominated by BlinkIt and Zepto, in early 2025. They’ve even got a homegrown CEO to lead the effort.
Take a look at the numbers.
Global brokerages estimate India’s quick commerce market to be worth $6 billion by 2025, up from near-zero level about three years ago. In fact, almost 40 per cent of online grocery sales now come from quick commerce.
India’s e-commerce market grew 18-20 per cent by value in the first six months of 2024, with grocery sales surging over 38 per cent, driven largely by a sharp uptick in q-commerce, according to estimates by Lattice and Datum Intelligence.
You don’t need an IQ in three digits to predict the world’s going q-commerce. Tomorrow, even a car could be sold on Swiggy, to be home delivered in 10 minutes.
Do also note, while India is a major market, quick commerce is gaining significant traction internationally across regions like North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, driven by changing consumer preferences for convenience and on-demand delivery.
The global quick commerce market size was estimated at $68.82 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 22.2 per cent between 2023 and 2030. The Asia-Pacific region is the largest market for quick commerce, accounting for over 50 per cent of the global market share in 2023. North America held the highest market share of more than 28.5 per cent in 2022.
For me, the penny dropped when I saw, er, sex toys being sold with toothpaste and eggs on Blinkit a few weeks ago. As someone who came of age in the rather repressed 80s, with exaggerated and highly imaginary tales of these toys, the visuals were a bit of a shock. Speaking of sex toys, about 20 years ago, pornography was supposed to be the great driver of technology on the Internet. Is it q-commerce today?
My interest in q-comm is the innovation that’s happening on almost daily basis. It’s not q-commerce per se, getting a shaving cream in eight minutes or eight seconds does not interest me. What interests me is — will urgent medical care reach us within eight minutes someday? And so on.
I’ve tried to put together a list of top innovations in this space in the last few months. They are probably not unique, but were the first movers AFAIK (that’s As Far As I Know — my daughter uses it frequently to give me vague answers). Note: Not all of these are strictly q-commerce, but come close.
Blinkit’s dynamic pricing: Blinkit employs AI algorithms to adjust prices based on real-time demand and competitor pricing, ensuring competitive rates for consumers. Blinkit got into this game as early as 2022, with the company charging anywhere between ₹20-50 as surge price to its customers. I’m sure everyone does it now.
Swiggy Instamart’s dynamic widget: Swiggy’s server-driven UI rendering engine can deliver UI changes within Swiggy’s mobile apps without requiring a new app release. Sounds technical? Traditionally image-based creatives took a lot of time to get deployed, and changing their design was a tedious technical process that required lots of coding. With DW’s ability to reuse and dynamically update widgets, that’s history.
Zepto’s demand forecasting: Zepto (took off during Covid, founded by probably the youngest Stanford dropouts) utilises machine learning models to predict customer demand accurately, allowing for efficient inventory management and reducing stockouts. Zepto is reputed to be one of the best q-commerce companies to use tech, and uses AI to enhance the effectiveness of its delivery network by taking into account variables like weather, traffic patterns, population, geography and the availability of last-mile supplies.
Dunzo’s smart logistics: Dunzo was founded in 2015 by ex-Housing.com guys, so they know their technology. I could write a separate article on their innovations, but just a few trail-blazing innovations are as follows: AI-powered demand prediction, dynamic pricing engine, automated dispatch system, GPS enabled tracking, fraud detection systems and so on.
BigBasket’s automated billing: Bigbasket killed the time-consuming, error-prone manual billing through AI to enable a seamless self-billing and self-checkout experience. BB used a deep learning model to detect unpacked/packed/loose items in fruits, vegetables and FMCG categories at the time of billing, across its stores. That’s 7 million images used for training the deep learning models!
So that’s what stands out for me. I think the tech innovations/learnings from quick commerce can be applied anywhere, in any category — including the government. Desh badal raha hain, after all! Do tell us what innovations you have noticed.
P.S. By the way, I love the EV two-wheelers everyone’s using for delivery!
(Shubho Sengupta is a digital marketer with an analogue ad agency past. He can be found @shubhos on X)