Flipkart Plans 10-Minute Medicine Delivery Amid Quick Commerce Boom

India’s 10-minute delivery race, which began with groceries and essentials is now branching out into food and medicine sectors. One of the major ecommerce players Flipkart is now reportedly planning to start delivery of medicines within 10 minutes.

As per ET, citing a senior industry executive, Flipkart’s quick delivery service, ‘Flipkart Minutes’, has started enlisting local chemists in the metros from where the products will be sold using its last mile delivery partners.

“Flipkart wants to develop Flipkart Minutes into a full-fledged quick commerce platform. Medicines is a hitherto untapped opportunity since existing platforms deliver products in an hour to even 3-5 days,” the executive said.

Inc42 has reached out to Flipkart for comments on the development. The story will be updated based on the response.

The report further said that the ecommerce major is also pacing up its drug delivery experiment for customers by partnering with local pharmacists, in alignment with India’s drug norms for foreign-backed e-commerce operators which bars owning inventory. 

Additionally, Flipkart is also looking to partner with registered chemists for this initiative.

This comes close on the heels of growing popularity of quick commerce service, which has spawned the rise of deep-pocketed giants such as Zomato-owned Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, Zepto, and Tata-owned BigBasket. 

Quick commerce and some ecommerce platforms have begun piloting and offering products at a short wait period to retain the interests of the consumers, while also looking to expand the product shelves available in their application.

For instance, in July, Swiggy, BigBasket, Zomato, and its Blinkit quick-commerce arm, were piloting home delivery of low-alcohol beverages such as beer, wine and liquors through their online platforms in several states, including New Delhi, Karnataka, Haryana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Goa, and Kerala.

Apart from the bigger players in the quick commerce space, there are more than 10 new quick commerce brands emerging in the market, looking to share the space with their competitive ideas of delivery.

Meanwhile, ecommerce major Amazon’s Indian arm is gearing up to launch its quick commerce delivery service, code named Tez, by late December or early next year, where it will begin with delivering groceries and daily essentials.