Confirming what had been reported earlier this week, Flipkart has hired the last remaining co-founder at Dunzo — Kabeer Biswas — to head quick commerce for the Walmart-owned e-commerce major. The move comes in as Flipkart is looking to make up for considerable lost ground in the rapidly growing quick commerce segment in India, currently lead by Zomato-owned BlinkIt, $5Bn valued Zepto and Swiggy’s Instamart.
Biswas is expected to head operations for Flipkart Minutes, the 15 minute quick commerce arm of Flipkart. Biswas co-founded 2014 Dunzo, one of the earliest movers in India’s quick commerce space. The startup raised significant funding from the likes of Google, Reliance Industries, among others. In recent years though, the company faltered on its path to aggressive growth due to varied reasons, with Reliance now reportedly having written off almost its entire investment.
India’s quick commerce space is an anomaly in the global scheme of things. The model hasn’t worked in most parts of the world, but reached a large size in the country at breakneck speed. In initial days, the model was under immense scrutiny in India as well, with most weighing in against the success of such a model. But companies have found an ever increasing appetite for quick commerce across the country, with now even Apple’s iPhones being delivered in 10 minutes.
The Indian quick commerce market is currently dominated by the likes of BlinkIt, Zepto and Instamart, but is seeing bigger players enter the fray at aggressive speed. Both Zomato and Swiggy — who own BlinkIt and Instamart respectively — have also gotten into quick 15 mins food deliveries. The likes of Amazon, Flipkart are joining in, with many others expected to speed up existing q-commerce ventures.
