Zepto, Blinkit and Swiggy Now Deliver iPhones Within Ten Minutes. But, Who’s Even Buying?
7 May 2025 6:00 PM IST
Right now, it feels like Blinkit and Zepto are everywhere. In Delhi, where I live, it's as if people’s days are incomplete without ordering one thing or the other through these apps.
Delivering groceries and shampoos in ten minutes is one thing, but now, quick commerce is expanding.
In March, Zepto announced that it’s going to join Blinkit and Swiggy and also begin delivering...iPhones. But, who's buying?
In this episode, we’ll learn about the rapid expansion of India’s quick commerce industry. From selling groceries in the pandemic, now, quick commerce apps even sell iPhones.
How the hell did we get here?
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TRANSCRIPT
Kudrat (Host): The other day, I was in Delhi’s GK2 market market with a friend. As she and I were walking around, she saw a shampoo at a pharmacy. She had been meaning to buy it for a while. Instead of just going in and getting it, she said, “Oh I’ll just order it on Blinkit.”
I didn’t say it in the moment, but I was quite surprised. Are we really so hooked on Zepto and Blinkit? Do we prefer deliveries so much that we’d say no to buying something right in front of our eyes?
Food delivery apps are popular everywhere–there’s Doordash and Uber Eats in the US, Meituan in China and of course, Zomato and Swiggy in India.
But, quick commerce, you know your Zepto and Blinkit, which deliver everything from apples to atta to even earphones, within minutes, are a peculiarly Indian phenomenon. Yes, they do exist in other countries as well but it’s only in India that they’ve grown as much as they have.
In March, Zepto announced that it’s going to join Blinkit and Swiggy and also begin delivering iPhones. So, the next time you’re in the mood to spend a lakh rupees, just hop on to Zepto. A delivery guy will pick up the product from a ‘dark store’ and boom, you’re now the proud owner of a brand new Apple product.
My name’s Kudrat Wadhwa, and you’re listening to The Signal Daily. We don’t do hot takes—instead, we bring you deep dives into the ‘how’ and 'why' of consumer culture.
In this episode, we’ll learn about the rapid expansion of India’s quick commerce industry. From selling groceries in the pandemic, now, quick commerce apps even sell iPhones. How the hell did we get here? Who’s even buying an iPhone at such short notice?
A few months into the COVID pandemic, two 17-year-old boys–Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra–started Kiranakart, an app that delivered groceries to people’s front doors, within 45 mins, and for just one rupee.
Dunzo was already a hit among Indian consumers. Soon, people began falling for Kiranakart too. Its founders then rebranded and named their app Zepto. Zepto, btw, is a prefix meaning “one sextillionth” of a unit. It’s also the smallest unit of time that scientists have been able to measure until now.
Zepto’s makers wanted the company to live up to its name: instead of Kiranakart’s 45 mins, Zepto delivered products in just ten minutes.
Analysts thought that quick commerce was a pandemic thing. But, the phenomenon was here to stay. The popular food-delivery app Zomato soon acquired another quick commerce company, Grofers, and renamed it to Blinkit. Even the beloved online supermarket Bigbasket jumped on the quick commerce train, launching BBNow, which delivered groceries to people’s doorstep within minutes.
In the past two years, quick commerce has exploded by 280%. In 2022, the sector was worth half a billion dollars. In just two years, experts valued it at 3.3 billion dollars.
It’s not that Indians are the first to make quick commerce apps, but the sector found particular success in this country because of a couple of reasons. First, these companies caught on to how we cook. Rather than doing weekly or bimonthly grocery hauls, most Indians shop for groceries in a more impromptu way. Second, labour costs in India are super cheap, and deliveries can cost as little as thirty or even twenty rupees.
A report by JM Financial found that delivery people work for about ten hours each day, and make two deliveries per hour. This means that in total, they make about 16-20,000 rupees per month. That’s a paltry salary, but so many Indians are willing to slog for even that little money. For the rest of us, twenty or thirty rupees doesn’t mean that much. This extreme inequality means that the ‘haves’ have a class of ‘have-nots’ to outsource tasks to.
The popular quick commerce apps we know today, you know Zepto, Blinkit and Instamart, all started by delivering groceries.
Indian consumers especially liked the convenience that they offered. In fact, a 2024 Deloitte consumer survey found that 49% of respondents preferred shopping for groceries online through quick commerce apps. The study also found that the demographics that particularly liked quick commerce apps were younger people in their 20s – the group we colloquially call Gen Z, those who live in urban areas and people whose household sizes are small, say one or two people.
Once they found success in the grocery space, quick commerce apps expanded into also selling FMCGs. Basically, they began delivering household goods, you know, shampoos, bodywashes, toothpaste and the like.
Indians welcomed quick commerce apps even within that segment, though not as wholeheartedly as they did with groceries. The same Deloitte survey I mentioned earlier said that in 2024, large FMCG brands reported a 2x increase in how much they sold via quick commerce apps. Now, 35% of all online sales of FMCGs are through quick commerce apps.
One caveat here is that most sales still happen in person. Online sales make up only about 10% of total sales of FMCG goods, according to the study. But, even within the online segment, it seems like people appreciate the convenience and speed that quick commerce offers.
Selling groceries and shampoos would be one thing. But, most recently, quick commerce apps have also started delivering more expensive products like TVs, and even iphones.
See, the truth is that the unit economics of delivering groceries and lower ticket items is too low to make bank. In order to make money, quick commerce apps need to diversify their product offerings. And that’s why we’re seeing these apps expanding into selling items that will make them a higher profit margin, like TVs and microwaves and fridges and yes, iPhones too!
Take a listen to Aadit Palicha, Zepto’s co-founder, talking about this strategy in an interview with the podcast Morning Brief:
Aadit Palicha: How will the expansion into new categories impact your profitability? So these categories are, are a creative for profitability for us, Mugan. I think the reason why that is, 'cause if you look at the a OV into margin for these categories, they actually are, the delta is much, much higher than, let's say, core FMCG in grocery.
And, and I think the, you know, that delta is much higher.
Kudrat (Host): Zepto and Blinkit and their kin are now also delivering high-ticket items, like smartphones. But, who’s even buying these products from them? Who needs an iPhone, which can cost over a lakh, at such short notice?
Turns out, very few of us! A report by Counterpoint Research found that high-value electronic products like smartphones contribute less than 1% of the sales of quick commerce apps. Even TV sales aren’t that meaningful either.
That makes sense, right?
I think all of us have used Zepto for groceries or to buy a charger, perhaps. Those are things we do need instant delivery for.
But the likelihood of most sane people engaging in an impulse purchase of an iphone or a laptop is rather low. Most of those are planned purchases, since they’re expensive.
If you want an iPhone and you live in a big city, you might want to go to the apple store and actually get a feel for the product. If you want a laptop, you might go on Amazon, and compare a few brands, before settling on one.
The Core spoke to a couple people who also confirmed this. They also said that they’re never sure of the quality of fruits and veggies they get when they order them on Blinkit. Returning them can be a hassle too, which is another downside of ordering a laptop on Zepto. What if the laptop I buy doesn’t turn on? What’s the assurance that Instamart will take it back and give me a refund?
Even though customers don’t feel so excited about buying expensive products from Blinkit, some industry leaders remain hopeful about quick commerce’s potential.
Representatives from Daikin, Godrej and LG told The Economic Times that they believe the upcoming summer will be hotter than usual, which will in turn help boost the sales of ACs via quick commerce apps. One senior executive said that people like to touch and feel smartphones, tvs and fridges before they buy them. That’s not the same for ACs though, in his opinion. For ACs, he said people make decisions based on brand names and energy efficient star ratings.
ACs have a relatively low penetration, of just about 10%, in the country right now. With increasing temperatures, it’s true that many more Indians will buy ACs in the near and distant futures. But, I’m not so sure of how many of us will buy them on Zepto. ACs require installation and setting up and can also cost quite a sizeable amount.
Quick commerce’s ‘dark store’ model and super fast delivery works well for groceries and even FMCGs. But, we at The Core aren’t positive about people needing more expensive products like iPhones delivered to them in just 10 or 15 minutes.
Still, it’s undeniable that right now, hyperfast deliveries are all the rage in the country. The Core’s Zinal Dedhia recently published a story on DTDC, a logistics firm, also jumping on the ‘dark store’ model of quick commerce apps, so they too can deliver faster. Her industry also sources weren’t sure of the long-term viability of the model, or even the need for 10-minute deliveries for high-ticket items. One CEO even said that she thinks that FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, is why everyone is hopping on the quick commerce bandwagon.
Zinal ends the story with writing “while quick commerce has carved out a profitable niche in groceries, its expansion into other categories via dark stores seems more like a money-burning experiment than a viable business strategy.”
Even India’s Commerce Minister has its doubts about the real utility of quick commerce. Recently, at the startup Mahakumbh, he quoted from this popular whatsapp forward that everyone was sharing. You know, the one that compared Indian startups with Chinese ones–under the China column, it said the country is making startups that produce EVs and batteries and semiconductors and AI. In comparison, Indian startups were instead focused on food delivery, betting or instant grocery delivery.
“We are focused on food delivery apps, turning unemployed youths into cheap labour so the rich can get their meals without moving out of their house," Goyal said.
That’s all for today. You just heard The Signal Daily. We don’t do hot takes—instead, we bring you deep dives into the ‘how’ and 'why' of consumer culture. The Core produces The Signal Daily, follow us wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.
