Was a sceptic but now believe in quick commerce’s potential: Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal

Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal

Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal said the recent boom of quick commerce in India, driven by the execution chops of a new crop of founders, has turned him into a believer in the space from a sceptic earlier.

In a rare media appearance, Bansal said, “I give a lot of credit to the people who are making it work. There was Amazon, Flipkart and other big companies, all of them were trying to do this (but) the people who figured it out are new founders…there is talent, ambition and an ecosystem which enabled the market.”

“If you look at Zepto, they were able to build a really strong team (by hiring) from Flipkart, Amazon and have been able to execute very well. There is talent and capital available and the founders have ambition,” Bansal said responding to Moneycontrol’s questions.

Zepto is among the top three quick commerce players in India along with Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart. The company’s growth has piqued investor interest who are pumping in around $650 million into Zepto at a valuation of $3.5 billion, Moneycontrol reported earlier. Zepto was started in 2020 by first-time founders Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra.

Bansal was speaking at the launch event of South Park Commons in India.

The tech startup community and early-stage venture fund founded by Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi is setting up an India dedicated fund and is on the lookout for two partners who will lead operations for the startup incubator in the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem.

Bansal is not alone, a slew of market experts wrote off instant grocery delivery but the industry has now matured. It has gone from being a good to have feature to becoming an indispensable part of companies like Zomato, which owns Blinkit and Swiggy, which operates Swiggy Instamart, analysts at UBS said in a note earlier.

While quick commerce has struggled in most countries globally, apart from densely populated countries like China, it has emerged as a $5-billion annual sales channel in India and will only grow further, according to Goldman Sachs.