Vroom time: Expect Big QCom to rev up India’s retail revolution

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Amazon is entering India’s quick commerce (QCom) race, close on the heels of pilots from Flipkart and Reliance. Tata’s Big Basket has morphed into a QCom platform.

These moves are likely to reshape the entire retail landscape, not just this boom segment of quick home delivery. India’s retail industry is estimated to exceed $1.3 trillion, of which the online slice is still just 5.4%, and QCom less than 0.3%. This slice-up is set to change, with e-com and quick-delivery services having grown rapidly even before the world’s biggest retailers make their debut in India’s QCom space.

The rise of Big QCom, if we may call it that, is likely to disrupt the country’s retail trade in all its forms and also impact other segments of this industry. Traditional retailers, the kirana or corner shops, are likely to be impacted harder than they have been so far by the rise of online sales, or by Qcom pioneers like Zepto, InstaMart and Zomato’s Blinkit. QCom beats corner stores on convenience as well as the variety of products on offer.

Now, kirana stores deliver goods home too, and their prices are comparable. Those who prefer to pay cash on delivery find no difference in the mode of payment either, except that the corner store we have been visiting for years might give us credit for a few days, which QCom services do not. Yet, the financial muscle of Amazon, Reliance and Walmart-owned Flipkart could spell advantages of scale from the very get-go.