Amazon goes for the quick commerce pie

**Akshara** (0:04)
In today's episode, we'll break down two important stories. First, we'll talk about Amazon going for the quick commerce pie, and then we do a sweep of the recent regulatory changes in India's financial system. Welcome back to The Daily Brief by Zerodha, where we cut through the noise to help you understand what's actually happening in the most important stories from business and markets. If you're listening to this on your commute, on a walk or at the gym, you can also find The Daily Brief as an audio podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you prefer reading, check out the newsletter using the link in the description. I'm your host Akshara and today is Monday, 6th July.

**Krishna** (0:43)
Hi folks. Sorry for interrupting your daily schedule, but this will take just a short bit. My name is Krishna. I am part of The Daily Brief team along with all of my other colleagues, Pranav, other Pranav, Kashesh and a bunch of other people.
So, it's been about 2 years of Market, and today is also our 500th episode. So, I just wanted to take out some time and say a big thank you to each of you, who listen to us, watches us, reads us on an everyday basis, and writes to us. We are very grateful that some of you find value in the work we do. The comments that you do, the likes that you give or the emails that you send us, that really keeps the journey going. And there are a lot more things we are planning to do, one of which is subtext, which is our conversations or podcast initiative. We'll release more details on it soon. But if you have any other ideas that we should be doing, any other feedback that you have for us, please do comment or mail us. I'll link it to you somewhere.
But thank you, thank you so much.

**Akshara** (1:49)
Coming to the first story.
So Flipkart and Amazon were the original heavyweights of the e-commerce business. And if you asked us who would lead the quick commerce race back in 2020, they would probably be the obvious answer.
They had everything from seller relationships to warehouse networks. So how could they not win? Of course, that isn't what happened. The industry was born out of food deliveries, not e-commerce, when Swiggy started experimenting with deliveries under an hour. And then out of nowhere, the upstart Zepto famously launched its 10-minute delivery promise. Soon thereafter, the new avatar of the once-fledgling grow-first Blink-It took an unmistakable lead. And these are now the three industry champions. From whatever we've read and the people we've spoken to, it practically seems impossible to beat them at this point. Still, given the sheer volume of action in the space, many new players have jumped into this race anyway, led by Amazon and Flipkart. In fact, that push seemed to be on the top of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's mind when he visited India last month, when he announced that the company will take its quick commerce service Amazon Now from 100 cities to 300 That's a massive commitment for a company that currently just has around 500 dark stores in India. Meanwhile, Flipkart's quick commerce arm, Flipkart Minutes, went from basically nothing in mid-2024 to over 1,000 dark stores today.
And that's the story we're telling today. But before we get there, it helps to understand why today's incumbents feel as confident as they do right now.
So the three companies that dominate quick commerce today have spent years losing money on every single delivery. And that spending is, in part, why they have the positions they enjoy. With BlinkIt capturing almost half of all orders, Zepto a third, and Swiggy just short of a fifth. Now, this enormous spending blitz is all but baked into how the business works.
Each delivery costs these company roughly the same, whether a customer spends rupees 200 or rupees 5,000. These companies braved that cost anyway to get people to order. They kept discounting and offering free deliveries even when the order value was well below what was worth it for them. That was the cost of creating this market. But over the past year, the giants have started tightening their bets. They introduced platform fees and handling charges, raised the minimum order value you need before a delivery is free, and pulled back on discounts. And it paid off. Blinkit reported its first operating profit in the January to March 2026 quarter, rupees 37 crore in adjusted bidder. Swiggy Instamart said it was on track to achieve contribution margin break even by the June 2026 quarter. A fancy way of saying it would stop losing money on each individual order, even if the overall business has large overhead costs it's yet to cover.