Ten years back, when someone wanted their spontaneous purchases get delivered to them at the comfort of their homes, it would have been impossible. Fast forward to 2024, it is as easy as eating a cake to get your deliveries at your home. Perhaps the credit goes to Dominos Pizza for pizza deliveries. No one knew back then that it was Q-commerce.
Q- commerce or quick commerce has its origin in pizza deliveries. This sector in India is relatively new and has a good potential for growth. In India q-commerce began with Grofers (now Zomato Blinkit) and is still limited to food, groceries and medicine delivery. According to an article in the Economic Times, the size of q-commerce market in India is $750 million.The actual size is eight times of it, meaning $5.5 billion. Top q-commerce players in India are:- Zomato Blinkit, Swiggy, Zepto, Bigbasket and Pharmeasy. These are established players and control over 80% of the market in India. As much as there is scope for growth, there are challenges in this nascent sector. Firstly, this sector is highly competitve and thus, the services provided by these giants is homogenous, with the exception of Pharmeasy which delivers medicines. Secondly, there are logistcial issues that come up as infrastructure is haphazard. Metro cities, inspite of having broad lane roads suffer from vehicle congestion which causes delay in deliveries. Same applies to the supply chain management as well. Most of the time, loading and unloading a huge inventory is carried out manually whic is time-taking. Third, giving away too many discounts hurts the revenue of the company in the short and medium term. Another important thing is that companies also have to give a fee to local vendors for procuring their products. They also need to increase the array of products they deliver rather than just focusing on the volume of sales. However, with the positive spillovers and economies of scale, companies are aiming for higher goals such as sustainable deliveries, directly procuring from the manufacturers instead of kirana stores. It would not be incorrect to imply that q-commerce is the future of e-commerce in India.
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