Remember the lockdown days? Just when we thought we had got groceries deliveries, here we are two years later, enjoying ‘Just-in-Time’ Inventory in households with 10–15-minute grocery delivery solutions, and guess what? Now we are also enjoying the delivery of every product under the roof of Quick Commerce. 

As the name implies, Quick Commerce is simply the advancement of e-commerce in which the entire product trade is based on the speed of delivery. The most crucial factor is how quickly a company can provide (it currently just takes minutes). Because the COVID-19 pandemic increased demand for necessary items to be delivered to customers’ doorsteps, this industry has seen an explosion in organic business growth. We can say that Q-commerce is a new, quicker kind of e-commerce. It brings together the benefits of conventional e-commerce and developments in last-mile delivery. 

Delivery time is the key distinction between e-commerce and Quick Commerce. Everything else comes after that. While Quick Commerce guarantees order fulfillment and delivery in minutes, traditional e-commerce usually takes 2-4 days for delivery. The two businesses’ methods for delivering goods to customers also differ from one another. Traditional e-commerce offers buyers deliveries from across the country, so the package may travel thousands of kilometers to reach the customer. Quick Commerce happens from inventory located close to the customer’s delivery location, usually less than 3km away.

Quick Commerce typically operates using two models, one is the dark store model, which holds fast-moving inventory in its warehouses. Store/warehouse can serve as large a population as possible. 

The other upcoming Quick Commerce model that is rapidly evolving, is the neighborhood store-led model. Here, the inventory is not held in dark stores and one can buy from shops in their neighborhood. Delivery distances are still usually within 3 km, so buyers get the same quick delivery, but now they get to buy millions of products from thousands of shops in the neighborhood. This means that buyers can now buy long-tail products and deliver them in minutes.

Quick Commerce also increases impulse purchases, as you can get products quickly. Traditional e-commerce is methodically organized and has substantially longer shipping times. The diversity of purchases is greater as a result, and the average cost per transaction is higher. Besides having a younger demographic, Quick Commerce buyers tend to try out new services more frequently than e-commerce customers, so there is a demographic gap between them.

The Indian ecosystem is becoming more adept at following trends more quickly. Many of the current last-mile delivery companies in India have evaluated Q-commerce. The last-mile delivery startups, Zepto, Zomato, Swiggy, and Dunzo all participated in the Q-commerce initiative, but there was no fast commerce that could offer all product categories under the roof of Quick Commerce, which will serve the ‘Just-in-Time’ generation. Since they all operate according to the dark store model, there is a limited selection of fast-moving products from a few brands available. 

With the upcoming ONDC initiative, buyers across platforms will soon be able to choose to buy from their neighborhood stores and get quick delivery in minutes. Platforms are powering neighborhood stores to sell their products using Q-Commerce on the ONDC platform, and compete with sellers who sell traditional e-commerce platforms.

The new approach to Quick Commerce is to onboard neighborhood shops to an online platform so they can communicate easily with customers and process orders. This is described as ‘Quick Commerce through local stores’. Since these local stores, as we all know, have traditionally relied on walk-in customers for their business, having a digital presence will enable them to do more business and bring nearly all product categories under the umbrella of Quick Commerce. 

In India, a live shopping app that uses this approach has already been launched, and it is successfully bringing local vendors to its platform. ONDC is expected to accelerate the pace at which buyers transact with neighborhood sellers compared to buying from traditional e-commerce sellers who may be a thousand kilometers away. 

Ultimately, the Quick Commerce future appears promising for all the right reasons. It encompasses everything from the delivery of everyday commodities like groceries to highly unique items like mobile phones, as well as stationary, gifts, clothes, electronics, and every other category of daily use. Q-commerce is expected to change the dynamics of digital commerce as a whole, making transactions more local.