Quick Commerce is here to stay, says LocalCircles survey

With the rise of Quick Commerce, a significant portion of online shoppers now rely on these apps to order all of their groceries rather than just essential or top-up items, revealed a survey conducted by community social media platform, LocalCircles.

The quick delivery of groceries has also changed customer expectations, with a delivery timeline of 30 to 75 minutes being the sweet spot. 

To be fair the Quick Commerce space has seen rising competition from new players such as Zepto which promise to deliver orders within 10 minutes, along with increased investor interest in the space. Ride-hailing app Ola too made a comeback in the grocery delivery space with the launch of its Quick Commerce service, Ola Dash, and has been scaling it up to new cities.  

Food technology major Swiggyhas ambitious plans for its Quick Commerce service, Swiggy Instamart, where it plans on investing $700 million to scale the service. Close competitor Zomato too has kept pace with its bet on Blinkit , which turned into a unicorn last year. 

The survey however points out that existing players in the space such as Tata-owned Bigbasket and Amazon Fresh are likely to lose market share if they continue to work with scheduled deliveries only, ranging from the next day to within four hours. 

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The survey, conducted over a period of five months and across 272 districts of India, asked 30,000 respondents about their online grocery shopping preferences and habits.

The survey was targeted at people with an annual income of over Rs 3 lakh and covered respondents across multiple cities including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, as well as Ahmedabad, Pune, Chandigarh, Indore, and others. Nearly 49 percent of the respondents were from Tier I cities.

Here are a few key takeaways from the survey:

• Of the 10,439 households ordering groceries online, one out of four uses Quick Commerce apps. However, only one out of 10 households actively use these apps and place more than 10 orders per month.

• Of the consumers who order groceries online, 49 percent said that selection and availability was an important criterion for them while ordering online. Only 8 percent of the respondents said that fast delivery was an important criterion.

• While the majority of respondents used Quick Commerce apps to order last-minute essentials, such as milk, bread, eggs, etc, a significant 29 percent relied on these apps to order all their grocery needs. Among the 10,070 respondents, 11 percent used the apps to order items of ‘indulgence’ such as ice cream, chocolates, paan and others.

• LocalCircles also conducted a smaller pilot study with 650 respondents from September 15, 2021, to February 15, 2022, among residents of Noida to rate online grocery services based on their delivery time, selection, customer service, quality and other parameters. The delivery time for Reliance-backed Jio Mart was the longest for Noida at an average of 36-72 hours while Blinkit was the fastest with deliveries between 10-30 minutes.