Taking quick commerce to food

When Zomato acquired Blinkit, the idea was that Zomato will use the grocery delivery model of Blinkit to create the equivalent of Swiggy Instamart. But, Zomato has gone one step ahead and announced 10-minute delivery of food. It will be a cloud kitchen cum clustered model where mini-units will service an area in the radius of 2-3 kilometers. Of course, it would be tough and costly, but it could set new standards in food. 

Quick Commerce trend

Today, online commerce and custom delivery models are commoditized. The novel idea is quick commerce or making deliveries in less than 15 minutes. This is not possible for all products and in all areas, but a great idea in clusters. That is what companies like Blinkit have been doing in Bengaluru where groceries are actually delivered in a jiffy. The idea is to kill any incentive to drive to the store and order goods by making the delivery process super-efficient. Extending this idea to food is a logistical nightmare but that is the direction in which ecommerce franchises are moving or need to move in the next few years. Why wait then? 

Pointless concerns expressed

Most of the concerns and objections on social media were frivolous at best. How can any attempt to cut down the time to delivery make the process less safe? Let us take an analogy. When share transfer time was cut down from 21 days to 2 days, the markets only became safer. When IPO allotments shifted from 90 days to 7 days, markets became better. It is pointless to say that an ambulance takes much longer to arrive. That is for the ambulance service to worry about. There is really no evidence to prove that the proliferation of delivery boys on the roads has in anyways added to risk. As Goyal says, from the perspective of the delivery boy, there will be no difference in a 10-minute delivery to the customer. 

Choice and efficiency

The new model of Zomato Instant is about choice and efficiency. Obviously, only some food products can qualify for 10 minute delivery. The customer now has a choice. Do they want a quick bite delivered in 10 minutes or whether they are willing to wait for 40 minutes to get a meal of their choice. What Zomato has done is to open up a wider choice for the customers. There are 2 challenges for Zomato. Firstly, managing the full logistics chain to sustain 10-minute delivery is going to be a Herculean task. Secondly, it will add to costs, but will not add to profits. That is the really big challenge for Zomato to deal with! ©