Swiggy’s Instamart opens offline experience store as quick commerce evolves

The experiment comes just days after Swiggy raised a massive Rs 10,000 crore via a QIP, which saw strong demand.

Instamart, the rapid delivery arm of Swiggy, has opened an experiential store in Gurugram as the quick commerce industry matures and consumers seek different ways of shopping.

The Bengaluru-based company has opened a first-of-its-kind Instamart-branded mini experiential store in Gurugram to allow consumers to get a touch and feel of the various products sold on the platform.

Such Instamart-branded experiential stores will be operated and run in and around societies. These will be opened by sellers, as is the case with the company's dark stores.

Under this arrangement, the sale proceeds will be given to sellers directly. Under the regular model, the money is paid to Swiggy, which is eventually transferred to sellers after deducting the company’s share.

To be sure, these stores are not retail outlets but mini experiential formats and will have a very limited stock-keeping unit (SKU) range. Such stores will have around 100-200 SKUs as against 15,000-20,000 SKUs at dark stores.

Their size will be around 400 sq feet, about a tenth of a typical 4,000 square feet dark store.

These stores will mainly have fresh fruits & vegetables (F&V), pulses, new product launches, and D2C brands.

While Instamart is running such a store in Gurugram for now, its expansion plans remain unknown. The company is yet to decide if it will continue such operations or even scale the project.

Swiggy did not reply to Moneycontrol’s queries.

For now, this will not mark Instamart’s shift to an omnichannel retail format, as per people aware of the developments.

The experiment comes just days after Swiggy raised a massive Rs 10,000 crore via a QIP, which saw strong demand.

In fact, about half of the QIP proceeds, the company said, will go towards quick commerce expansion.