Anika Begay
India’s fast-growing online commerce market is attracting a new entrant with a deep portfolio: Walmart-owned Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce company.
Flipkart has started rolling out Flipkart Minutes, its express commerce service, in parts of Bengaluru. The new service offers customers the option to get a wide range of items, from groceries to smartphones, delivered within 10 to 15 minutes. The e-commerce firm is offering customers free delivery on orders of Rs 100, or $1.20.
Flipkart is the latest entrant into the instant commerce market, which is rapidly gaining traction in India, even as the model has failed in many other markets. Instant commerce players, which rely on hundreds of small warehouses or “dark stores” strategically placed near residential and commercial areas for fast deliveries, have expanded into several categories in recent months, including fashion and electronics, increasingly encroaching on Amazon and Flipkart’s traditional territory.
Flipkart did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TechCrunch reported in March that Flipkart was working on a rapid commerce offering.
The move comes at a time when India’s fast-food sector is showing remarkable resilience and growth. The convenience of 10-minute grocery deliveries has struck a chord with urban Indian consumers, leading to encouraging signs for companies like Zomato-owned Blinkit, StepStone-backed Zepto, and SoftBank-backed Swiggy Instamart.
Analysts and investors also love this space. Goldman Sachs estimates that Blinkit, India’s leading fast-food player, is already worth more than its parent company’s eponymous food delivery business. Zomato shares hit an all-time high of $30 billion in market cap last week after the company, which acquired Blinkit for less than $600 million in 2022, reported quarterly profit of about $30 million.
Flipkart is the leader in India’s e-commerce market, but Amazon has a stronger hold on urban Indian customers. The Bengaluru-based startup sees rapid commerce as a way to win over some of Amazon’s core Indian customers, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Amazon, for its part, has shown little interest in entering the express commerce space in India, instead focusing on same-day delivery for Prime members and questioning the quality of “express” delivery services’ products in its marketing campaigns. The world’s largest e-commerce company is separately in talks to acquire a stake in Swiggy, which has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.
A recent analysis by TechCrunch found that many of Amazon India’s best-selling items were available on fast-commerce platforms, meaning the company risks losing some of its business and traffic to fast-commerce companies.
