I know people generally post things on Twitter mostly for bait, so I should not think too much about this, but it makes me really sad to realise how much people undermine quick commerce in India. All the tweets about India’s innovation being 10-minute delivery and astrology and the engagement they get show people don’t understand how difficult it is to run delivery at scale.

E-commerce is all about low prices, wide selection, and fast delivery.

It’s an extremely difficult challenge to provide all three elements. This challenge is similar to the blockchain trilemma of ensuring all three aspects - scalability, security, and sufficient decentralisation - are addressed.

No one has solved it yet.

People might argue 10 min delivery is not as complex as deep tech, building a foundational model, but it is truly challenging. I understand this challenge’s complexity because I’ve worked on marketplaces for six years and have had countless conversations internally and with VCs and founders from both India and Southeast Asia.

After two decades, after building fulfilment centres across the U.S. and achieving over 70%+ Prime penetration in U.S. households, Amazon still can’t match the convenience we enjoy in India. Some can dismiss our achievements and say oh it is just cheap labor in India, but that’s incorrect. Labor prices determine delivery unit economics, but they don’t account for the thousands of micro-decisions and supply chain optimisations needed to make 10-minute delivery possible.

Previously, no one attempted it, before Zepto shown it is possible, and now we have multiple quick commerce companies doing 10 min deliveries, and other e-commerce players have followed.

In India, we have managed to achieve 10-minute delivery at a reasonable price [I had written right earlier, but then remembered people will complain about their 10 min Dhaniya being twice the price as the neighbourhood kirana store], and all quick commerce players are now trying to expand their selection. Once you establish how to deliver Diet Cokes in 10 minutes and create the supply chain infrastructure, and SOPs, you can extend it to medicines and other essentials.

These companies are have also entered so many tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Previously, in these cities, fast delivery was unimaginable. Services catered only to premium customers, as if convenience and speed were luxuries only high earners deserved. But now, even people who never imagined getting items delivered in 10 minutes receive them at reasonable prices. And I think they deserve a lot of credit and not memes comparing their accomplishments to Deepseek.