Synopsis
Amazon's aggressive 10-minute delivery push is intensifying competition in India's quick commerce market, putting pressure on leader Blinkit. While Blinkit previously focused on premium customers, it's now recalibrating strategy amid rising competition. Amazon leverages its Prime membership for speed and selection, aiming to capture the same urban, high-frequency shopper.The company’s chief executive Andy Jassy, during its March quarter earnings call, said that Amazon Now’s orders are growing 25% month-on-month, and that Prime members are tripling their shopping frequency once they start using it. According to people in the know and company filings, Amazon Now is clocking around 450,000-500,000 orders per day on average with a footprint of around 500 dark stores at present, compared to Blinkit’s over 3 million daily orders with over 2,200 such micro warehouses. Amazon recently announced plans to expand its dark store footprint.
Unlike incumbents that invested heavily in building and operating their own networks, Amazon is taking a leaner approach. Startups like Inamo run several of its dark stores, while logistics is handled by third-party providers such as Loadshare and Shadowfax, industry sources said.
The impact of Amazon’s growth is already visible, with Blinkit acknowledging losing some market share in important cities even as it recalibrates pricing and expansion decisions in response to rising competition.
While Flipkart also continues an aggressive rollout, industry executives say it is Amazon’s entry that has emerged as a competitive challenge to Blinkit.
At the heart of this battle lies a fundamental principle of the retail sector — which of the three dimensions does a platform choose to focus its efforts on: convenience, assortment, or value.
“Focussing on only one is not enough and trying to focus on all three is a distraction,” a senior quick commerce executive said. “Most outcomes depend on these choices. Whether it's order volumes, repeat customers, AOVs (average order values), or even profitability. It comes down to which two of the three pillars you choose to build on and how much your conviction is.”
"Despite strong incumbency from existing players... the market is still structurally underpenetrated and rapidly expanding, creating multiple entry points for new players. With only 30% online shopper penetration today, India’s ecommerce market is expected to grow 3x to $250 billion by 2030, indicating significant headroom for growth," said Anand Ramanathan, partner, Deloitte India.
"With consumers being value-conscious yet not purely price-driven, durable loyalty is more likely to accrue to platforms that deliver consistent quality, dependable fulfilment, and predictable pricing over time. This sets up a clear divergence: incumbents may consolidate around network efficiency, better unit economics, and customer lifetime value, whereas entrants will need to carve defensible niches through differentiated value pools," Ramanathan added.
Amazon and Blinkit did not respond to ET’s queries.
Blinkit’s premium pivot meets reality
For much of the past year, Blinkit built its quick commerce strategy around convenience and assortment, deliberately avoiding the discount-heavy tactics that defined the sector’s early growth phase.
“For the past 12-15 months until the beginning of this year, Blinkit had been making a tough choice in a market rife with discounts, offers, free deliveries, to stick to its ground and target premium customers that come to it not for pricing gimmicks, but because it would deliver in the promised time and have a large variety of items available,” said a Mumbai-based mutual fund investor who has exposure to the sector.
The approach helped Blinkit scale rapidly. It aggressively expanded its dark store network, at one point adding three stores a day across metros and large cities. Rivals Zepto and Swiggy Instamart instead focussed on discount-led growth and sale events.
“Both these players tried aggressive discounting, ecommerce style sale events, and heavily burnt cash, but ended up in a battle with each other rather than impacting Blinkit,” another executive said. “This gave Blinkit room to dictate its own terms. It got to choose when to expand, when to prioritise market share, or if and when to push for profitability.”
That flexibility is now narrowing amid rising competition.
“The impact of competition is visible in the lack of significant margin expansion that we would have otherwise expected,” Eternal CEO and Blinkit founder Albinder Dhindsa said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.
Dhindsa said growing competition from incumbents and ecommerce entrants was creating pressure across pricing, delivery fees, marketing, and store expansion. “It's just different shapes and forms that it comes in, whether it is in terms of aggression in discounting, or aggression from other players in marketing activity, or aggression… in free delivery or store expansion in certain geographies,” he said.
Even Swiggy has begun emphasising long-term play over short-term market share gains, with CEO Sriharsha Majety saying the company wants to build a “more durable business” despite intensifying competition.
Prime power
Amazon’s biggest advantage in quick commerce may be its existing Prime customer base. Industry executives say Prime users are loyal, high-frequency shoppers who are more profitable and a natural TG (target group) for 10-minute grocery delivery. Amazon is expanding its quick commerce network around areas with high Prime density.
In a December interview with ET, Amazon’s SVP for emerging markets Amit Agarwal had said that Prime members shopped three times more frequently within 90 days of a new dark store launching in their area.
For those tracking the sector, Amazon’s positioning is strikingly familiar. “In most strategy meetings for quick commerce, Amazon's leadership repeatedly talks about two aspects, ‘speed and selection’. Their network is being built around this. What may seem as aggressive expansion, heavy discounting, or a broader marketing push at this point in Amazon's journey is all built around the core of the 'speed and selection' pillars,” a person familiar with the company’s plans said.
That places Amazon squarely in Blinkit’s lane, competing for the same urban, high-frequency customer who values fast delivery and wide choice.
Industry executives say the next 8-12 months will be critical for Amazon, Flipkart, and Blinkit as each chooses between market share, profitability, and long-term positioning in an increasingly crowded quick commerce market.
