By Hugo Barcia
New Delhi, Feb 14 (EFE).- In India, where speed is the new currency of commerce, the quick commerce sector has revolutionized home deliveries.
Three local giants dominate this emerging market, even challenging US e-commerce giant Amazon, which has had to rethink its logistics to deliver iPhones, medicines, food, and almost any item in just 10 minutes.
The theory is simple: get home; realize that you need something, like a bag of chips, batteries, or cough drops; and instead of going out to the street to buy it, order it on your mobile and have it delivered instantly.
To do this, a fleet of motorcyclists wearing jackets of the most striking colors—yellow, orange, and purple—patrol the main cities of India at all hours, always ready to rush about to do their job for a few rupees.
The rise of this new form of commerce has not only been accompanied by an increase in turnover and the number of companies in the sector, but also by an increase in the number of items available, which now allows buyers to instantly receive an iPhone, a Playstation 5 or a coffee maker, among other items.
The fast-commerce industry in India reached a value of $3.34 billion in 2024, growing six-fold in two years, and is expected to rise to around $10 billion in 2029, according to a report by the Indian firm Chryseum.
Until now, the sector has been dominated by three Indian platforms: Zomato’s Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, and Zepto, but its rapid growth has led giants like Amazon and Flipkart—controlled by the American wholesaler Walmart—to enter the race.
Last month, Amazon stepped into the quick commerce market with a pilot project in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, servicing only a few neighborhoods, according to Indian media reports.
“Amazon is making the entry into quick commerce because quick commerce is eating up market share in certain categories in certain markets,” Karan Taurani, vice president of the Indian capital markets firm, Elara Capital, told EFE.
In addition, Amazon has “a very good supply chain and logistics system,” which, according to Taurani, will facilitate its entry in the sector.
However, to do so it will face the challenge of unseating the already established Indian platforms.
Swiggy’s head of human resources, Sanjana Shetty, explained to EFE that its platform, Instamart, was created in 2020 to cater to “a young population that is time-pressed and wants convenience.”
In almost five years, the platform has gone from offering 9,000 products to more than 20,000 today, with over 400,000 workers in nearly 50 cities.
For orders to arrive in ten minutes, they have dozens of warehouses spread across the cities within a radius of one to two kilometers.
The same is true of their main rival, Blinkit, also present in 50 cities with 639 warehouses, which they hope to increase to 2,000 by March 2026, according to their annual report for the 2023-24 year.
Anil Kumar is a delivery man for Blinkit.
Dressed in the company’s characteristic fluorescent yellow suit, his job consists of waiting next to his motorcycle—like dozens of others—outside the warehouse assigned to him, located in the center of New Delhi, until they inform him of an order.
“We get money per ride basis. There is no salary. We have medical insurance up to 100,000 rupees (about $1,150),” explained Kumar, who gets about 45 rupees ($0.52) for trips of about two kilometers.
Every day he works between eight to ten hours, during which he is able to complete around 30 orders that earn him some 1,000 rupees a day (about $11).
And although he assures that they are not penalized for not arriving at the client’s home on time, he and his colleagues work “very quickly” to “complete the greatest number of orders” and earn the highest possible salary.
A life against the clock, unlike that of the client, who, without leaving their home, has everything they want at hand in less than 10 minutes. EFE
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