Flipkart Quick App - Download
Azarias Alvarez
Last week, it was reported that quick-commerce startup Dunzo shut down a few dark stores across cities to optimise cost. Foodtech giant Zomato, which acquired Blinkit earlier this year, last week reported a 35% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) rise in its net loss to INR 250.8 Cr in Q2 FY23, with the quick-commerce startup contributing most of the loss.
Flipkart Quick is a hyperlocal service by India's leading e-commerce Flipkart. The service was created to offer customers the convenience of quick doorstep delivery for essential items like groceries, COVID-19 essentials, fresh food, and other household essentials. Flipkart Quick delivery allows customers to order and receive it within 90 minutes.
Customers can choose to order in the next 90 minutes or book a 2-hour slot starting with a minimum delivery fee of Rs 29. Flipkart will leverage on-demand logistics service Shadowfax for the quick delivery service. The Walmart-controlled entity had invested $60 million in Shadowfax in December last year.
Flipkart Quick was launched in Bengaluru in 2020 to widen the accessibility of products and enable quick delivery for consumers who order products from Flipkart hubs in their location. The hyperlocal delivery service offers an assortment of more than 2,500 products in categories such as fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, grocery, mobiles, electronics and baby care.
Homegrown e-commerce site Flipkart has said that it is planning to offer 90-minute deliveries for groceries and home accessories. Hyperlocal service Flipkart Quick would also sell mobile phones and stationery items. This would put Flipkart's service a step beyond Amazon's quick-delivery service that currently offers just groceries. It would also take on Alibaba-backed BigBasket and RIL's JioMart.
Cut to November 2022, the ecommerce major has scaled down Flipkart Quick consolidating the business with its next-day grocery delivery platform Flipkart Supermart. This effectively means that its quick commerce service, which was available in 14 Indian cities, including Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Chennai, is currently operational in only two cities.
Yet another tech-enabled company that decided to join the quick commerce bandwagon was Ola. In December 2021, it started Ola Dash as a 10-minute grocery delivery service in Bengaluru with plans to launch a network of 500 dark stores across 20 cities.
The segment, however, remains a promising one. According to a report by consulting firm Redseer, India's quick commerce sector is expected to grow 10 to 15 times in the next five years to become a $5 billion market by 2025.
However, there is an unwritten caveat. The ones who will survive and even thrive will be players with solid financial backing and strong business fundamentals who can sustain the pressure of ultra-quick deliveries.
This may help it hold its stead as a standalone quick commerce player where similar companies have failed. This failure can be traced to the lack of financial wherewithal to in invest in customer acquisition, set up a supply chain complete with dark stores as well as a well-outlined inventory model.
For example, Dunzo, which was a delivery app before, found it difficult to make profits because it was just a manpower service that pivoted into quick commerce. It soon realised that mapping delivery and pickup is a completely different ballgame than managing inventory in dark stores while also adhering to 10-minute delivery timelines.
While the quick commerce segment remains a play of geographies, it remains to be seen if apart from Blinkit and Zepto, which other players are able to scale operations on a pan-India level, just like food delivery apps have managed to. Or will the future see some new permutations emerging in the already heated up space?
In October 2020, Flipkart acquired a 7.8% stake in Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail for US$204 million.[43][44] The following month, Flipkart acquired the intellectual property of gaming startup Mech Mocha for an undisclosed amount.[45] The acquisition formed part of Flipkart's plans to gain and retain users by offering casual games.[46] In November 2020, Flipkart acquired augmented reality company Scapic, which provides a suite of tools to create and publish augmented reality, virtual reality, and 3D content quickly and without coding.[47]
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