Swiggy Instamart has emerged as the fastest player in India's rapidly growing quick commerce sector, which is dominated by players, including Blinkit, Zepto, BB Now, and Flipkart Minutes, according to a report by JP Morgan.
To be sure, JP Morgan was one of the bankers to Swiggy’s $1.35 billion IPO which went live earlier this month.
The delivery arm of Swiggy recorded the lowest median delivery time among its competitors, offering deliveries in just 8 minutes across the top four Indian cities, JP Morgan said. This comes in contrast to its promised 6-minute delivery window, making it the quickest in the sector, according to the report.
It added that Zepto’s median delivery time of 9 minutes (vs median promised delivery time of 5 minutes) was the second fastest among the top three players.
Blinkit, the market leader in quick commerce, is the slowest among the top three players (Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart) as it has a median delivery time of 11 minutes in the top four cities (vs median promised delivery time of 8 minutes).
Swiggy also had the lowest variance between median promised delivery time and actual delivery time at 2 minutes. Blinkit, with a variance of 3 minutes, was second and Zepto, which had a variance of 4 minutes, was third among the top three players.
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Tata's BB Now, which also competes in the quick commerce space, had a median delivery time of 11 minutes, aligning with its promised delivery time, while Flipkart Minutes—the newest entrant—recorded the slowest deliveries at a median of 15 minutes. Like BB Now, even Flipkart Minutes matched its median promised time with its actual delivery time in the top four Indian cities.
Earlier in the year, the Indian government had asked quick commerce companies to prove their claims of delivering in 10 minutes. While the authorities had provided a buffer of 4 minutes, it said that any company taking longer will have to tweak their messaging to provide a fair and accurate view.
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All companies, barring Flipkart Minutes, met the 14-minute threshold that the government was scrutinising. However, as it happens, Flipkart Minutes is new and is rapidly scaling beyond Bengaluru because of which its delivery timelines will be longer in comparison to the other existing companies.
The details around delivery timelines come at a time when quick commerce companies are scaling rapidly beyond just grocery items to deliver everything from spectacles to apparel, all of it in minutes. The market is growing rapidly even after it became a $5.5-6 billion industry in under four years.
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