For grocery, Neu Flash will be powered by BigBasket—which itself is moving to a fully-quick commerce model— while Croma is selling electronics and phones and Tata Cliq too will handle fashion and lifestyle products starting with certain stock keeping units (SKUs).
This is the latest bet from the Mumbai-based steel-to-salt conglomerate to tap the online shoppers. Zomato-owned Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto are the top three players with over 85% of the market share. Flipkart has its service named Minutes, while Reliance JioMart is testing the service again after having decided to shut its 90-minute delivery under JioMart Express.
Quick commerce, which is growing faster than modern retail chains like Reliance Retail, Dmart and Spencer Retail, per a recent Bernstein note, is disrupting ecommerce and other forms of retail too. This in part is the reason why consumer platforms are reacting to the change playing out with platforms ready to deliver a wide range of goods beyond grocery in 10-20 minutes.“There’s a lot of work going on around this. Cliq is expected to go live on both Neu Flash and BigBasket. Strategic brand partnerships are being formed too,” one of the people briefed on the matter, said
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A spokesperson for Tata Digital that houses Tata Neu did not respond to ET’s query till press time Sunday.
For Tata Neu, how it approaches the quick commerce business would be interesting as the group has taken a call to be cautious on heavy spends on consumer incentives. At the same time, the market leaders are flush with cash and are going all out to corner market share. Zepto, which is raising up to $150 million from local investors after scooping $1 billion in two months, has emerged as the challenger to market leader Blinkit–which according to several brokerages has around 40% market share.
Tata-owned epharmacy 1mg, which delivers in a few hours in select regions like Delhi NCR, is yet to fully go live on Neu Flash. However, certain daily use medicines for headache and products like protein whey are available for 10-minute delivery on the platform. Tatas may also tap into the existing retail store network for Croma to enable some of these deliveries, sources said, adding that the stores were already tapped for same-day and next-day deliveries.
“Yes, the demand and buzz are so much one has to address it. Quick commerce, unlike in other global markets, has really taken off in India on demand and certain users–at least in metros–are willing to pay for the convenience too,” another person aware of Neu Flash’s plan, said.
BigBasket–which runs BB Now–charges a tiered delivery fee for various order sizes. Owing to increased capital inflow in the sector, Blinkit is offering free delivery at Rs 199 while Swiggy reduced it to Rs 99. These pricing tweaks are in reaction to Zomato’s plan to raise $1 billion in fresh cash to amp up the quick commerce battle amid the ongoing festive season where consumers are likely to spend more than a normal business day.
ETtech“Fashion has done well this festive season and we have seen some demand for standard products – innerwear, kurtas, solid colour shirts and trousers for quick delivery,” another senior industry executive said on fashion for quick commerce. Blinkit has already enabled returns for fashion– a key feature for this category.
“Blinkit continues its expansion across various cities in India as the service is gaining acceptance from customers beyond tier 1 cities. We expect quick commerce to clock around 120% y-o-y growth in gross order value in FY25F-26F led by strong store additions,” a note from Nomura said last week.
A separate note from Jefferies also said new markets are seeing “surprisingly strong ramp-up, but the immediate opportunity is much larger within the top eight cities which remain underserved.”
ETtech“Overlap between food and QC is decreasing as QC appeals to a wider audience,” the note said on Zomato and Blinkit user overlap.
ET reported last week that Zepto is likely to see investors like family offices of Manipal group chief Ranjan Pai, Mankind Pharma brothers Ramesh Juneja and Rajeev Juneja, and Cipla join Zepto’s funding round of $100-150 million from domestic investors including Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company.
