Night delivery is the new battlefront for grocery e-commerce platforms. Swiggy Instamart, the grocery delivery arm of restaurant delivery and search aggregator Swiggy, a first for the industry, has extended grocery delivery time till 3 am, starting with select markets. The SoftBank-backed grocery service said it had witnessed a 16-fold growth in orders in the 12 months to June, with Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai topping the list.
Swiggy Instamart has been operational in over 25 cities from 7 am to as late as 1 am, and with the help of the store owners and delivery partners, it is extending its operational hours further in some cities (subject to municipal rules) based on customer requests, giving them access to over 5,000 products and addressing everything from late-night cravings to emergency purchases.
Y Combinator-backed Zepto said it is piloting round-the-clock delivery in select locations in a few cities. It is delivering till 1 am across all 10 cities and is now piloting 24×7 deliveries. It’s still early days, but we are seeing consistent growth in late-night order volumes,” a Zepto spokesperson said.
Quick-commerce companies are leading the night-delivery business since they can get products to homes in 15–30 minutes through a network of dark or small delivery-only stores that function as
Young people joining the workforce would be key consumers for late-night ordering”. Reliance-backed Dunzo is also making late-night deliveries. “We are seeing a decent part of our order volumes come up late in the night as well,” said Mrunmayi Oke, head of revenue at Dunzo. “The deliveries happen almost round the clock. For example, in cities like Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi, we deliver groceries up to 2 am. We want to be there for our customers when they crave that midnight snack, dessert, or beverage. Millennials and Gen Z are currently a sizable portion of our target audience, and they frequently order late at night.
Zomato-backed According to industry executives, Blinkit is also evaluating the extension of the delivery window beyond the usual 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
In quick commerce, the overall bill sizes are small on shorter-duration deliveries; volumes tend to grow faster month-on-month, with consumers making impulse, unplanned purchases.
According to a report by consulting firm RedSeer, India is now the fastest-growing market in terms of adopting express grocery delivery, surpassing China. The report pegged the Indian quick commerce market at $700 million and projected it would grow 15 times to $5.5 billion by 2025. According to the report, quick commerce accounts for about 13% of the $5.5 billion online grocery industry, with the instant delivery trend having taken off during the Covid-19 pandemic.