Some would say that it is a dying art to visit a grocer for buying your monthly grocery. But what about when you are in the middle of your recipe and an ingredient is missing out? That is exactly where ‘Quick Commerce’ (often abbreviated as Q-commerce) comes in as a game-changer, and enables you to get that missing ingredient(s) delivered at your doorstep within just 10-15 minutes, and that too without having to call anyone or waiting for hours for a local grocer's delivery person to come home with the product you need!

Despite being the newest proposition in India’s ever-expanding commerce space, Quick Commerce in our country is growing exponentially at the moment and has certainly off late emerged as the ‘buzzword’ and ‘next big thing’ within the nation’s online-commerce and retail ecosystem. Quick Commerce is set to revolutionize the way people buy and get access to essentials and other daily-use items.

According to a recent report released by consulting company RedSeer, the market penetration of Quick Commerce in India is estimated to grow up to 10-15x in the next five years to cross over $5 billion by 2025. The same report also aptly highlights that in the near future “the market growth will be driven by rising adoption of Quick Commerce among the convenience-seeking customers with unplanned ordering behavior” and “Covid-led change in buying behavior will promote the growth of Quick Commerce as replacement of Kirana purchases.” 

One of the key driving factors behind the sudden boom of Quick Commerce has surely been the pandemic-led restrictions and stay-at-home mandates, which were accepted as the ‘new normal’ after the Covid-19 outbreak began in our country and lockdown was imposed by the Government. In the aftermath of the pandemic, consumers - especially the urban, young and tech-savvy ones - are increasingly becoming more inclined towards ‘convenience-oriented’ shopping and are further becoming used to quickly and instant/express deliveries for daily essentials and household items. And this pandemic-induced dramatic shift in consumer behavior and demand is what is predominantly driving the rise and rise of the Quick Commerce segment, which initially started with grocery deliveries and has now expanded into ultra-fast deliveries for various types of consumables and items. 

Another reason contributing to the growth of Q-commerce in India is that it allows consumers to save time and effort and pay minimal or zero fees on express deliveries – all at the same time.

But then how are brands in the Q-commerce sector able to fulfill their deliveries in such a short turnaround time? The answer to that lies in understanding and implementing the concept of ‘micro-warehouses’, also known as ‘dark stores’. Dark stores are the fulfillment centers that are located in areas closer to the point of delivery of consumers that can facilitate faster deliveries. Instead of having 3-4 large warehouses servicing an entire city such as with the e-commerce model, Q-commerce companies have instead set up hundreds of dark stores to decrease the delivery turnaround times significantly.

From small start-ups to food aggregators to big retail companies, e-com giants, and so on, there are so many players that have joined India’s burgeoning Quick Commerce bandwagon in the last year or so. Simultaneously, the segment has also noticed a massive spike in investor interest. From the likes of Google, Tata to Reliance, big players as well as venture capitalists and angels are investing and backing various companies in the Q-commerce space to dominate the market in the coming years; and furthermore, a number of existing startups or companies in the homegrown Quick Commerce space in our country are already on the path to massive profitability and growth and even becoming Soonicorns or Unicorns! 

All in all, the future of Quick Commerce looks brighter than ever before, with a lot of room for new innovations – be it in terms of improving speed, agility, and customer experience or beyond -- are also around the horizon today!

Conclusion 

Of course, Q-commerce is a game-changer and is disrupting the Indian e-commerce market as we know it. And the ‘Quick Commerce trend’ in India is something that is here to stay and offers the promise to transform the perceptions of new-age commerce altogether in the long run. In the near future, it can be said with confidence that the market and scope for Quick Commerce is going to further expand in the country like India, where huge migrations are happening to tier-I cities and people are looking for convenience along with safety for the riders who are delivering the products.

Furthermore, the Quick Commerce space also now bears the golden opportunity to amalgamate and provide to customers and end-users the best of both worlds – of online commerce and offline commerce. But in order to realize this opportunity, we would need to broaden the definition of Q-commerce and move with all the categories that should be delivered within a certain period of time - which can only be done via partnering with local sellers across the country and creating an efficient delivery network to fulfill the last-mile deliveries optimally.