Why AI-First Strategies Will Decide The Winners In India’s $40 Bn Quick Commerce Market

India’s quick commerce market is shifting rapidly — from a race for speed to a competition for intelligence and personalisation. With the sector projected to hit $40 Bn by 2030, platforms are being pushed to move beyond discount wars and delivery timelines to stay competitive.

AI is no longer just an efficiency lever, it’s becoming central to competitive strategy in quick commerce. From hyper-personalised user journeys and GenAI-powered content to predictive fulfilment and agent-led product discovery, AI is transforming how platforms operate and how consumers engage with them.

According to Inc42’s State Of Indian Ecommerce H1 2025 report, while speed remains a critical differentiator, platforms must go beyond rapid delivery to truly stand out and that’s where AI will play a defining role.

Ishank Joshi, MD and CEO at a madtech platform, Mobavenue, too, believes that the future of quick commerce goes beyond speed and hinges on a deep understanding of consumers and engaging them meaningfully. 

“AI is at the core of this transformation, enabling brands to personalise experiences, drive customer retention, and optimise operations,” Joshi said. 

He sees quick commerce platforms boosting consumer loyalty by offering personalised rewards through AI-driven loyalty programmes. Besides simplifying the shopping experience, the technology is expected to aid q-commerce platforms in the areas of predictive demand forecasting, inventory optimisation, and wastage reduction for overall efficiency.

With AI opening a new realm of possibilities, let’s dive deeper into how quick commerce platforms are reimagining their edge and what it will take to win the next wave.

Leveraging AI To Personalise UX 

As per a survey, a majority of customers (71%) purchasing online prefer personalised interactions. This is where AI-driven customisation is essential for quick commerce platforms to succeed. It can be achieved through advanced chatbots for customer support and by creating more relevant ads based on their choices and interests. 

Besides, while recommendation engines on quick commerce platforms are already getting smarter, AI can further enhance them based on the purchase history.

Some other major use cases that experts see are in providing product recommendations based on location and using AI-enabled billboards or other out-of-home ads in areas with high footfall. GenAI is key in this context, according to experts.

“Quick commerce platforms require generating a large amount of content and GenAI can make it easier for consumer brands to generate their landing pages,” said Vaibhav Khandelwal, cofounder and CTO of Shadowfax. 

Giving an example, he said, if Tata Sampann wants to do an ad, it could use GenAI to generate brand campaigns to be hosted on the quick commerce platform. In addition, GenAI can help brands generate respective images or videos, personalised and contextualised based on factors like languages for a set of users, Khandelwal explained.

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While AI can improve user engagement on the quick commerce platforms, Umair Mohammed, the CEO of Nitro Commerce, believes that the use of AI, at least the usage of advanced AI models in GenAI or Agentic AI, is currently at a very nascent stage in the country. 

While customer service is the most recognised AI use case, Mohammed sees vast untapped opportunities for quick commerce and broader ecommerce platforms.

“The US-based ecommerce companies have adopted AI for ad generation, creating creatives, and catalogue generation, which is helping smaller companies improve their marketing without investing a lot in hiring agencies or a big team of creative people. In India, some of this work of ad generation has started, but we are yet to catch up,” he added.

Meanwhile, as per a recent report by Google, a leading quick commerce platform, Zepto, has turned its video asset creation from a week-long process to a few hours using Veo, which is Google’s AI-powered video generation model. 

By adding motion to images, Zepto has improved its video aesthetics, leading to an 11% boost in app installs at double the previous scale. 

Therefore, there lies a huge scope for quick commerce platforms to improve ads and videos with AI for connected televisions (CTVs) to tap into high-intent audiences through sharper targeted content.

Q-Commerce & The Era of AI-Connected Devices

The adoption of connected devices, be it TV or various audio devices, is increasing in the country, with quick commerce platforms on the winning end.

Industry leaders see a big opportunity in this space. For instance, they see platforms targeting health-conscious consumers with AI-powered ads for protein supplements, smart wearables, and other health-related items. 

Meanwhile, the future has just begun. Shadowfax’s Khandelwal sees a time when connected devices place orders on quick commerce platforms before you run out of groceries.

“In the next five years, I foresee agents like Alexa coordinating with quick commerce apps, say Zepto or Blinkit, and placing orders on your behalf,” he said.

Reimagining Product Discovery With AI 

With the rising influence of AI in people’s daily lives, it is the right time for quick commerce platforms to think about improving product discovery and tailoring it to the taste of consumers.

Per Mohammed, this can be achieved by making the customer-side interface more modern.

“No ecommerce or quick commerce platform today has a ChatGPT-like interface. The interface of ecommerce platforms hasn’t changed for 12 years, they have the same product page, home page, and add-to-cart button. These platforms need to think more about how to use AI to make this interface more efficient so it resonates with the next generation of users,” he said.

For example, he sees a day when AI agents can pick and find the best item in a category for users as per their price range and delivery time requirement, without the users having to go through the hassle of finding and placing the orders. 

Driving Smarter Logistics With AI 

If there is one area that forms the backbone of quick deliveries, it is logistics. With the demand for ultra-fast deliveries on the rise, logistics players have started adopting AI for ETA predictions, warehouse management, and making other core aspects more efficient and smarter.

Let’s take an example. According to several reports, last-mile delivery accounts for over 40-50% of fulfilment costs, while reverse logistics for time-sensitive products increases cost burdens. 

AI-driven route optimisation and order batching can help lower delivery costs without compromising on speed. Besides, bundling incentives for larger orders can improve profitability.

“Problem statements in traditional logistics are how can you optimise the right routes? How can you identify the right resource that needs to be allocated and the right delivery partner to get that order delivered? How do you forecast the ETA of an order? Logistics players, including us, have started addressing these problems with the use of AI,” Khandelwal of Shadowfax said. 

Giving insight into what logistics players are currently working on, he added, unlike platforms like Zomato, Swiggy, or Zepto, users are not asked to put their exact location on platforms like Flipkart or Myntra. That is where Shadowfax and other platforms are using AI.

Meanwhile, experts opine that while quick commerce platforms have focussed more on enhancing the customer support part, they now need to work on improving their chatbots for delivery agents using GenAI.

Besides, there remains a huge market to be unlocked by AI-powered drones. These drones can help improve delivery time, solve for reverse logistics, and the ocean of opportunities is quite deep. 

Why AI Is Now Core To Quick Commerce Success

As India’s quick commerce sector races towards a $40 Bn opportunity by 2030, AI is no longer a nice-to-have — it’s a core competitive advantage. For platforms looking to lead, incremental improvements won’t be enough. The next leap will be driven by those that embed AI deeply across the value chain, from personalising shopping journeys and streamlining logistics to predicting consumer needs and optimising customer engagement.

Industry experts agree that adopting AI-first strategies is not just about boosting operational efficiency, but also about future-proofing relevance in an increasingly crowded market. In a world where speed alone is no longer a differentiator, intelligence, anticipation, and hyper-personalisation will decide who scales and who fades.

The question is no longer whether quick commerce platforms will adopt AI but how effectively they can harness it to win India’s next growth frontier.

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