Slotted delivery rides out quick commerce wave

Several grocery platforms, including those offering quick delivery, continue to retain the option of choosing a delivery window. Industry executives said this is because consumers tend to use the two formats for different shopping occasions, with quick commerce catering more to immediate needs and scheduled delivery to larger and planned purchases.

Different Shopping Occasions

According to a Grant Thornton Bharat report, nearly 45% of consumers use quick commerce for emergencies or last-minute purchases, while another 24% use it primarily for daily top-ups such as milk and bread. Only 12% use quick commerce for monthly stock-ups. “Quick commerce has fundamentally altered consumer expectations around convenience, but it has not eliminated the need for planned grocery shopping,” Naveen Malpani, partner, Grant Thornton Bharat, said.

BigBasket, for instance, continues to offer slotted deliveries, as the format tends to result in higher average order values. Quick commerce platform Zepto also introduced a slotted delivery option in a pilot across select locations, including Delhi and Bengaluru, last December. The option allows customers to schedule orders for a same-day time window instead of opting for instant delivery. The move was also seen as a way of easing pressure on instant-delivery infrastructure during peak hours, while allowing the platform to cater to larger baskets.

The move was also seen as a way of easing pressure on instant-delivery infrastructure during peak hours, while allowing the platform to cater to larger baskets.

Offline-first supermarket chains have also retained scheduled deliveries. DMart continues to offer six-hour delivery windows for large-basket orders, while SPAR Hypermarket, Simpli Namdhari’s and AapkarBazar also offer slotted delivery.

Fresh Staples

For fresh and staples-focused businesses, the willingness to wait can be linked to the nature of the purchase. Fireside Ventures- and Blume Ventures-backed Anmasa, which sells fresh staples, said quick commerce has not eaten into its planned deliveries.

“A household ordering a 10-minute pack of biscuits is not the same household ordering 10 kg of Sharbati (wheat) milled that morning,” Yatish Talvadia, founder and chief experience officer, Anmasa, said. The company has scaled up 23-fold across Gurugram and Noida over the past year.

“Having helped build Milkbasket, I’d say the slot was never the value. Predictability was. The real question is what the customer gets for waiting,” Talvadia said.

Scheduled delivery has also remained relevant for milk, eggs and bread, where customers want regular replenishment without having to place an order every day. This has helped sustain milk delivery platforms such as Country Delight, Reliance-owned Milkbasket and Akshayakalpa.

At the same time, grocery companies are under pressure to offer faster fulfilment. Offline supermarket player BuyBuyCart, which initially followed a slot-based delivery model, has shifted to deliveries targeted within 30 minutes, along with real-time tracking, citing changing customer expectations.

Naman Lahoty, partner, Stellaris Venture Partners, said companies should continue offering slots where there is demand, but warned that on-demand delivery has already captured a larger share of consumer spending and order frequency.

“The bulk of spending and order frequency has already shifted to on-demand, and players that don’t offer this risk losing mindshare, even in categories they continue to serve well,” Lahoty said.

For grocery companies, scheduled delivery can still offer an economic advantage for larger orders because deliveries can be consolidated and routes planned in advance. This can improve delivery density, fleet utilisation and inventory planning, Malpani said.

“The fundamental advantage of scheduled delivery is that it can optimise cost, basket size and route efficiency, rather than speed alone,” he said.