Quick Commerce Is Changing The Rules Of The Retail Game: Future Group’s Kishore Biyani

Speaking at the fifth edition of the D2C summit organised by Inc42, Future Group’s founder Kishore Biyani said that the advent of quick commerce has the potential to change the Indian retail industry in the upcoming future.  

“From my understanding, quick commerce is changing the rules of the retail game. I have a deep interest in quick commerce and have been visiting multiple dark stores in recent times. Even though it is a young business vertical, it has potential to change the Indian retail sector in the near future. Quick commerce has seen exponential growth, and I see it becoming a INR 100K Cr business in the coming future,” he said. 

Founded in 1987 by Biyani, Future Group operates supermarket chains Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar and lifestyle stores Brand Factory and Central, among others.

The business mogul’s comments come at a time when India’s 10-minute deliveries space is taking over the Indian ecommerce realm. The quick commerce market is currently dominated by Zomato’s Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy’s Instamart. Flipkart also recently forayed into the quick commerce segment.

Recently quick commerce major Blinkit’s CEO Albinder Dhindsa said that the platform’s growth was the result of consumers shifting their preferences for deliveries from next-day delivery ecommerce platforms to the quick commerce platform. 

“… This has led to a direct share shift of a number of non-grocery use cases to quick commerce where customers were primarily reliant on ecommerce for buying these products,” he said in Zomato’s shareholders’ letter. 

Brokerage Bernstein said in a research report last month that while Reliance and DMart constitute about 85% of modern retail revenue share, their penetration within the top 10 Indian cities, including Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata, is limited. These metro cities markets are targeted by quick commerce platforms, which leaves a large headroom for key players like Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, and Zepto to expand further.

At a recent held event, Zepto’s cofounder and CEO Aadit Palicha said that India’s top 40 cities provide enough headroom for Zepto to take its valuation beyond $30 Bn in the near future if it continues to strengthen its presence there.