Q-commerce growth: Flipkart, Amazon bet on large base

MUMBAI: E-commerce arch-rivals Flipkart and Amazon are on an expansion spree of sorts-they are aggressively ramping up the count of fulfilment centres to gain market share in quick deliveries, a segment they have been late to enter, ceding most of the space to Eternal’s Blinkit, Swiggy’s Instamart and IPO-bound Zepto.As they play catch up in a market pegged to touch $65-$70 billion (in terms of GMV) by 2030, both companies are leaning on their existing (marketplace) consumer bases to drive quick commerce transactions. For Amazon, its paid membership service Prime gives it an edge while Walmart’s Flipkart is betting on its 250 million active users to widen adoption of its instant delivery platform Minutes.

On Tuesday, Flipkart said its network of micro fulfilment centres has now grown to 1,000 centres-the firm has been nearly doubling the count of such centres per month this year over the last. Amazon and Flipkart are building their quick playbook around consumer relationships and loyalty in a space where the rules until now were being defined largely by speed, analysts said.“We have a huge annual Flipkart customer base. Once they start transacting on Minutes, they get hooked to it and they also start transacting more on the larger Flipkart platform,” Kunal Gupta, SVP-head of Flipkart Minutes said in an interview. The company’s quick commerce push has also allowed it to build a play in newer segments such as fresh and bakery, driving category expansion and getting new consumers through Minutes, executives said. For Flipkart which claims that orders on Minutes have grown five times since last year, daily essentials has been the biggest category in terms of consumer spends.Amazon is pumping several million dollars into India as it sets up bigger urban fulfilment centres to house a wider set of products.Prime membership which allows access to Amazon’s OTT service is a big pull for consumers and the company is leveraging that to sign up more quick commerce users. “Amazon Now isn’t starting from scratch on trust or logistics. By targeting areas with high Prime member density, it is immediately capturing the most valuable, high AOV (average order value) urban consumers,” said analysts at The Knowledge Company. Players like Flipkart are eyeing the value segment, challenging market leader Blinkit which has built a premium-category strategy, said analysts.A big part of Flipkart’s focus is on smaller cities and it sees a large opportunity in the value grocery space, pegged at $700-$800 billion in India, said executives.