A new-age race to redefine consumer convenience

Q-commerce is transforming E-commerce and growing at 45% CAGR, reshaping India's shopping habits with mobile-first convenience

- BY VERNIKA AWAL

The 45-year-old Noida resident Sarmishtha Sahoo dons multiple hats through a single day. On the personal front, Sahoo is a mother to her 16- and nine-year-old daughters and a seven-year-old Golden Retriever dog-Mufasa. She and her husband have professionally helmed a multi-crore corporate upskilling firm in Noida for the past 15 years.

Sahoo, incidentally, is also one of the most prolific users of Zomato's quick commerce marketplace, Blinkit.

"Thanks to balancing work, life and everything else in between, innumerable things tend to fall through the cracks. Quick commerce has honestly become a lifesaver-in the past four days, the range of things that I have ordered on Blinkit includes sanitary pads, a handheld massage gun, charcoal sketching pencils, a Hot Wheels die-cast toy car set, and compression sleeves for legs. I no longer need to panic about forgetting something or specifically take time out to physically go to a departmental store to fish out items from a list,” Sahoo says.

This is one of millions of examples of how quick commerce emerged as one of the most disruptive services of 2024. Armed with the promise of 10-minute deliveries of essential groceries and items well beyond that, quick commerce has emerged to disrupt the entire E-commerce world, causing the established duopoly of Amazon and Flipkart to sit up and take notice. In the process, commerce, in the overall sense, has also shifted even further towards mobile-first experiences.

A STEADY GROWTH

An investor report published by brokerage firm JM Financial earlier this year indicates that the quick commerce industry was cumulatively valued at USD 3 billion at the end of the 2023 calendar year. By the end of this decade, it is projected to reach USD 40 billion in market valuation—surging ahead at a cumulative annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 45%.