The quick commerce industry in the country is growing rapidly and major players such as Zepto, Zomato's Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart are facing competition from emerging players. Ine- the past a few months, these players are trying to increase both the market share and the number of dark stores.
All brokerages acknowledged the rising competitive heat in quick commerce after Eternal (formerly Zomato) announced that its food delivery gross order value declined (1.4% sequentially) also due to temporary shortage of delivery partners due to high demand in quick commerce.
In his letter to shareholders, Deepinder Goyal, Founder & CEO, Eternal highlighted that food delivery growth witnessed slowdown and it is due to three key reasons including the "shortage (temporary) of delivery partners due to high demand of delivery partners in quick commerce given the rapid expansion of the industry in the last few months." The drop in demand is also due to competition from quick delivery of packaged food from quick commerce.
In its recent report, staffing conglomerate TeamLease Services said quick commerce maintains a steady hiring pattern throughout the year. Balasubramanian A, Senior VP and Business Head at TeamLease Services, said the country's q-commerce sector is expanding at an unprecedented rate, with the market size projected to reach $5 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 10-15%. "The surge in last-mile delivery, dark store operations, and warehouse management roles is reshaping the gig economy, with Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Telangana leading as key employment hubs," he said. Blinkit added 294 net new stores in the fourth quarter of FY25, and is on track to get to 2,000 stores by December 2025. In quick commerce, the company's Adjusted EBITDA losses increased sequentially from Rs 103 crore to Rs 178 crore.
"The increase in losses was expected and in line with our plan to pull-forward expansion of our store network. About 40% of our overall network of 1,301 stores are underutilized stores, opened in the last two quarters alone (216 in Q3FY25 and 294 in Q4FY25). We also added 1 million sq ft of new warehousing space to support the store expansion. Despite that, the Contribution margin (which includes all expansion costs except capex) increased from 3.8% to 3.9% of NOV (net order value), said Albinder Dhindsa, Founder & CEO, Blinkit.
He is of the view that competition is going to intensify further in the near term. "This is the largest consumption category in the country and beyond just the early quick commerce players, we will continue to see competition from next day delivery companies as they invest more in faster deliveries, especially in non-grocery categories," he said, adding that they are aggressively looking to grow the market share, especially in the face of heightened competition.
Last month, Zepto's co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha said the company is getting close to $4 billion in Annualised GOV (gross order value), which represents about 300% year-on-year growth.
Meanwhile, Swiggy on Friday announced that its quick food delivery service, Bolt by Swiggy, is now operational in over 500 cities.
For Swiggy, the format is a powerful consumer acquisition and retention lever—with new users acquired through Bolt showing 4-6% higher monthly retention than the platform average. Importantly, delivery partners are not informed that an order is a Bolt one, and no incentives are tied to delivery speed, ensuring safety-first execution at every touchpoint, Swiggy said.