Quick commerce is driving more ecommerce firms to conduct pilots in major cities to assess the feasibility of quicker deliveries based on stock availability, logistics and revenue considerations, said industry executives.
Major players such as Flipkart, Nykaa, Myntra and FirstCry are increasingly offering same-day deliveries across metros and tier-1 cities.
Lifestyle ecommerce platform Myntra is piloting M-Now, a quick delivery service offering delivery within 30 minutes to two hours in select Bengaluru pin codes, making it one of the first major fashion players to enter the quick commerce segment. The pilot offers a limited product selection, with delivery time varying by product. Myntra had previously introduced M-Express, which enabled deliveries within 24-48 hours.
“We launched M-Express earlier, enhancing the customer-experience with regard to speed, and have been experimenting with a pilot for faster delivery in a select few pincodes. We will look at expanding it further based on the insights gained, before launching it formally,” a spokesperson for Myntra said in response to ET’s queries.
Consumer internet platforms are increasingly looking to offer deliveries in a few hours to customers beyond metros, in tier-1 and tier-2 cities.
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“This is one of the major areas of focus for all brands and everyone is redesigning processes to get to customers in a few hours, if not 30 minutes, because that’s not possible for everyone,” a senior executive working with several large national brands selling online said on condition of anonymity.Beauty and fashion etailer Nykaa fulfils 80% of orders in the top 12 cities either on the same day or the next day. Among these, 10-15% are fulfilled on the same day, while 85-90% of orders are delivered the next day.
Similarly, mother and baby care products retailer FirstCry provides same-day delivery in about 40 cities across India, chief executive Supam Maheshwari said during the company’s second quarter earnings call on November 14.
Zomato-backed ecommerce enablement firm Shiprocket, which recently introduced ‘Shiprocket Quick’, a same-day shipping service for merchants has onboarded about 2,000 customers in the past two months, according to chief operating officer Gautam Kapoor.
“We see an immense amount of demand from people who are looking for faster deliveries from both buyers and sellers. That’s how the demand is changing,” he told ET, adding that now delivery times of ten minutes to half an hour are seen as fast, compared with three or four days a few years ago.
Fashion and beauty brands accelerate deliveries
During Nykaa’s recent quarterly earnings call, Anchit Nayar, the chief executive of the company’s beauty segment, highlighted the focus on enhancing order delivery speeds.
The Mumbai-based firm is prioritising a segment of its inventory, ‘fast-moving everyday stock keeping units’, which includes essential beauty products, aiming for delivery within 30 minutes to three hours.
On October 9, Nykaa launched a 10-minute delivery pilot in Borivali, Mumbai.
Both Amazon India and Flipkart—the largest horizontal etailers—are offering same-day deliveries across metro cities such as Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi.
Fast-fashion startup Libas is evaluating two-to-three-hour delivery with Myntra and aims to fulfil 25% of its total orders on the same day by year-end.
“We understood the potential of how the quick commerce industry is shaping up and how the demand for quick commerce in the country is increasing,” said Sidhant Keshwani, founder of Libas. “Also, when we say quick commerce, it is not just enabling delivery speed, but also integrating technology on what products the customers see, and we need to understand how to communicate with the customers as well.”
Brands try own solutions
Even as brands are going to quick commerce platforms for ultra-fast deliveries, they are trying their own quick delivery models, working with third-party logistics firms.
Personal care brand Pilgrim plans to pilot a 20-to-30-minute delivery service next year via dark-store partnerships.
While Pilgrim is already live on major platforms such as Blinkit and Zepto, cofounder Anurag Kedia acknowledged growing consumer demand for even faster deliveries. “If we order something from the brand website now, it will be delivered within 24 hours. We are seeing whether we can enable a 20-to-30-minute delivery,” he said.
Bengaluru-based Rare Rabbit, owned by Radhamani Textiles, is also launching one-day delivery in major metros, while The Pant Project, a fashion brand specialising in custom-made and ready-to-wear pants, has started conducting a quick delivery pilot in Bengaluru.
“As long as the logistics, the warehousing and the transport can be managed with an efficient network, I think quick commerce has potential to disrupt regular ecommerce,” said Dhruv Toshniwal, founder of The Pant Project.
Even pet care is catching up. Bengaluru-based Supertails, in partnership with hyperlocal players like Zippee, uses dark stores in key cities to enable faster delivery for pet products and veterinary medicines.
“There is a next wave of new categories or products that are getting added to quick commerce like apparels which you would not expect otherwise to be delivered within hours… Also, the current number of Zip codes which are getting handled by current quick commerce companies is a very small percentage of the overall market opportunity,” said Vikram Gupta, founder and managing partner of IvyCap Ventures.
IvyCap Ventures recently led a Rs 51 crore series A funding round of Blitz, a quick commerce logistics enabler startup, to enhance its 60-minute delivery infrastructure and dark store network.
