He also outlined similar views in an interview with ET on August 9, stating for the first time that quick commerce is eating into the share of kirana sales.
The impact of quick commerce on kirana, or the general trade channel, especially on grocery delivery has been much debated within the industry. A report by Datum Intelligence noted that quick commerce could corner more than $1 billion of sales from kirana stores in 2024.
The reality is that quick commerce is impacting kiranas more than ecommerce and the larger retail ecosystem, Barua said. “The fundamental SKUs (stock keeping units) are different for large ecommerce and quick commerce,” he said on Thursday.
Quick commerce firms Blinkit, Instamart and Zepto are setting up larger warehouses to accommodate increasing SKUs across categories such as home furnishing, toys, fashion, and daily need items.
“Quick commerce firms have figured that if you go from 15-minute delivery to four-hour delivery, saying you want to facilitate a bigger range of SKUs from larger warehouses, you are essentially re-engineering a warehouse. Another step, and you’re reinventing an Amazon fulfilment centre,” Barua said.
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“Even if quick commerce expands its total number of SKUs, it’s going to look a lot like ecommerce, where the large players have entrenched advantages,” he added.Zomato-owned Blinkit said earlier that in some locations, it was offering as many as 25,000 unique SKUs.
Counter view
While Barua, also a director on the board of listed food delivery and quick commerce firm Swiggy, reiterated the impact of 10-minute deliveries on kiranas, companies making these deliveries have a different view.
Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal, speaking at The Economic Times Startup Awards 2024 in October, had said that he was surprised by the growth of quick commerce but that it was not affecting kiranas.
“The growth of quick commerce has been a surprise for us as well. What we have noticed is that Blinkit is not really eating into the kiranas, it is not even affecting companies like DMart. We are more or less eating into Amazon and Flipkart’s shares as well as the modern retail space in the larger cities. Also, we are increasing consumption a little bit,” Goyal said at the time.
Delhivery’s quick commerce plans
The Gurugram-based company has announced plans to start intracity third party quick commerce logistics service. As part of this initiative, brands would be offered shared warehouses from where Delhivery will make quick dispatches within a 1-2 hour timeline.
Barua said on the earnings call that Delhivery will soon start piloting this initiative in Bengaluru with a beauty and personal care company. This forms part of the company’s strategy to drive growth and overcome a sluggish market.
“There’s a lot of logic for companies…to partner with Delhivery to solve problems for national ecommerce shipping, national B2B shipping, and quick commerce. So, irrespective (of the impact of quick commerce on ecommerce), we will launch our third-party service. The only part that we will not play in, obviously, is 15-minute deliveries of cigarettes, food and so on, which is the low AOV (average order value) segment in this market,” Barua said.
