Quick-commerce platforms are taking their private-label push into fresh produce, targeting a category that offers the highest margin potential but is also the hardest to standardise. Zepto has rolled out Bloom for fruits and vegetables, while Swiggy’s Instamart is building Nectr, as platforms are looking at extending private labels beyond staples and packaged products and capture more of the economics of a category that features in a majority of quick-commerce orders.
Fresh produce private labels can generate margins of 35-45%, according to industry estimates, compared with 20-25% for premium packaged private labels and 15-25% for staples.
The margin potential is substantially higher than what platforms earn on produce sold by third-party sellers, making fruits and vegetables an attractive next step as private labels gain scale. Private labels currently account for 12-16% of quick-commerce sales, up from 6-8% in early 2025, with staples driving much of the initial expansion.
Zepto’s Bloom builds on the farmer integration programme of the same name that the company announced in February 2023. The programme put farmers on a dedicated app and enabled direct sourcing from more than 1,000 growers across eight states, with support on pricing, seeds and crop quality, collection, wastage and financing through tie-ups with non-banking finance companies. At the time, Zepto had said fresh fruits and vegetables accounted for more than half of its orders and nearly a third of its revenue.
Instamart is taking a similar approach with Nectr, which has been running as a pilot across five dark stores in Bengaluru. In its investor presentation this month, Swiggy said the pilot had increased fruit-and-vegetable spending by 10%, lifted repurchase rates by 12 percentage points and improved platform retention by 7 percentage points. The results point to the potential for a private label to do more than improve margins by also increasing customer frequency and retention.
The move follows years of investment by quick-commerce platforms in sourcing and supply-chain capabilities. Fresh produce is more difficult to operate than staples because quality varies with soil, weather and season, while products can spoil within days and are harder to standardise. Analysts said platforms have spent the past couple of years building supply-chain integrations and quality controls that are now making own-brand fresh produce more feasible.
The model has already been established by Tata-owned BigBasket through Fresho, while a new crop of startups has also attracted investor interest in the segment. FirstClub, Origin Fresh, Handpickd, Pluckk, Freshly and LoveLocal have collectively raised more than $80 million, reflecting the opportunity in a category where consumers have limited information on quality. Fresh produce sold online is exempt from displaying expiry or best-before dates, leaving freshness and consistency as important differentiators.
Staples remain the most developed private-label category in quick commerce. Instamart’s Supreme Harvest accounts for 22-25% of the category on the platform, up from about 18% a year ago, while Zepto’s Daily Good has 12-14% and Blinkit’s Whole Farm 8-10%, according to e-commerce analytics firm 1digitalstack.ai.