Now, Walmart-owned Flipkart has also jumped into the race and entered the minute-only delivery service fray with its new offering ‘Minutes’. Launched in Bengaluru, it would pit against Zepto, Swiggy’s Instamart, and Zomato’s Blinkit. It came months after Flipkart’s entry into the 10-minute delivery market had been speculated.
Flipkart has now expanded the ‘Minutes’ service to all of Bengaluru’s tech and residential hotspots such as HSR Layout, Gunjur, Bellandur, and Kadubeesanahalli. Witnessing high demand for quicker deliveries, Flipkart is delivering a host of products right from electronics to smartphones within just 10-15 minutes in these areas.
“The service has gone live in select parts of Bengaluru, ” said a person aware of the development. “The idea is to keep perfecting it first and then expand.”
Sources close to the event told FE that Flipkart was looking at operating around 100 fulfillment centers as part of its plans to scale up its quick commerce play ahead of the festive season. Sources said the 15-20 minute delivery services by Zepto, Instamart and Blinkit were eating into sales that would otherwise go to Flipkart and Amazon.
Flipkart has introduced same-day delivery for several categories of products, thus helping the Bengaluru-based company reach millions of customers across 20 cities—metropolitan and non-metropolitan. Non-metro cities include Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Guwahati, Indore, Jaipur, Ludhiana, Nagpur, Patna, Raipur, Siliguri, and Vijayawada. This service would be further expanded to other cities, Tier-II and Tier-III areas, and categories. This new initiative of quick commerce is thus different from this service in the fact that it seeks to deliver products to individuals within the shortest time.
According to Hari Kumar G, vice-president and head of grocery, Flipkart, the platform is not only strengthening its grocery services in metros but also entering Tier-2+ towns across the country. Quick commerce and next-day delivery models can coexist, said Kumar. The company will also eye quick commerce services in the future if it sees demand in any particular region of the country.
