This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.
Mahadev Waghji Patel ran Choice Mart for nine years in an affluent neighborhood of Mumbai. His local customers relied on the store for their monthly groceries, and continued to come in even when e-commerce players like Amazon and Flipkart gained popularity in the mid-2010s. Patel put food on the table and educated his kids on the income from the store.
Two months ago, Patel shut down Choice Mart and opened a hardware store in a different neighborhood. “It’s not possible to deliver within 10 minutes, free of cost,” he told Rest of World. “The best option is to shutter down and switch your line of work.”
India’s kirana stores – small shops selling daily essentials that are a staple of almost every city neighborhood – dominated the country’s retail economy even after modern trade arrived 20 years ago, largely due to their own efforts to resist foreign-owned big-box stores. The mom-and-pop stores fought against Walmart’s encroachment; after Amazon entered the country in 2013, they survived by working with the online retailer to store inventory and serve as pickup points. They created similar partnerships with homegrown giants like Reliance Retail and Flipkart.
But the arrival of quick-commerce companies like Zepto, Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, and Dunzo is proving to be a more difficult challenge. Quick-commerce customers place orders spontaneously, at odd hours, and for odd things – such as getting underwear or an iPhone delivered in under 10 minutes. They value convenience and speed over price.
Quick-commerce companies “are providing the convenience of impulsive buying just by the click of a button and within 10 minutes,” and threatening the survival of more than a quarter of India’s 15 million kirana stores, Karan Taurani, a research analyst at Elara Capital, told Rest of World. Over the past year, 200,000 kirana stores have closed, according to the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation, the biggest retail association in India.
Many kiranas are trying to keep their longtime customers by offering home delivery. Rajesh Gupta, 59, has run a tiny convenience store in New Delhi for 28 years. “This shop helped me educate both my children,” he told Rest of World. Recently, fewer of his regular customers shop in person. Gupta has managed to hold on to them by offering free delivery to those who live within a few hundred meters of the store. “We don’t charge a delivery fee even if the order is just a bottle of soda,” he said.
This strategy didn’t work out for Patel’s Choice Mart. “It’ll be Rs 25 on Zepto, and I’ll have it for Rs 20, but it could take my delivery boy 20 to 25 minutes to deliver,” he said. “By then, the customer has canceled the order.” At the peak of his business, Patel had 12 employees in the store. Some of them carried out deliveries, but Mumbai’s traffic and unreliable parking meant Patel could not guarantee delivery in 10 to 15 minutes.
Pricing was also a concern. When Patel suggested a new product to customers, they’d say they could buy it much cheaper online, he told Rest of World. And they were right. Patel himself sometimes bought products online to resell in his store – it was cheaper than buying through distributors in the retail supply chain.
Dhairyashil Patil, national president of All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation, told Rest of World the organisation is fighting for fair competition. The low prices offered by quick-commerce companies “create confusion among customers,” Patil said. “Many of them now believe store owners have been deceiving them for a long time. In reality, these quick-commerce businesses are burning cash to establish a monopoly in the market.”
Zepto was valued at $5 billion as of August, and Blinkit at $13 billion as of April. Tata’s BigBasket and Reliance’s JioMart have decreased the time for deliveries from two-three hours to under 30 minutes. The four-year-old Zepto reported a net loss of $158 million in the financial year ending 2023, according to data from the market research company Tracxn. Blinkit posted a net loss of $131 million during the same period.
In the past few months, the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation has written letters to the commerce ministry, urging it to enact the Digital Competition Bill, aimed at setting a minimum sales price and capping excessive discounts. Patil said the Competition Commission of India is investigating quick-commerce companies for dubious business practices including ownership of dark stores, predatory pricing, disruption of traditional retail distribution, and not disclosing expiry dates.
Quick-commerce companies earn higher margins by sourcing directly from brands rather than distributors and wholesalers, Kushal Bhatnagar, an associate partner at Redseer Strategy Consultants, told Rest of World. The strategy also helps the companies stock newer brands that aren’t available in kiranas. Bhatnagar said that quick commerce sells a broad array of products, going “well beyond just groceries into categories such as gifting, beauty, home decor, [and] smaller electronics.”
Blinkit, Zepto, JioMart, and Flipkart declined to comment.
Quick-commerce companies in India currently earn more than 90% of their revenue from the country’s 10 or 12 biggest cities, according to a report by Elara Capital. Smaller cities may be next, Patil said. “Our goal is to ensure a level playing field before this uneven competition spreads to other cities,” he told Rest of World. Quick-commerce services have already started launching operations in smaller cities like Nashik and Vijayawada.
Culturally, kiranas still have an advantage.
For one, they freely replace and refund items. Patel said that his store, Choice Mart, might sell 100 paper plates for a birthday party – but if only 75 plates were used, he’d refund the customer for the remaining 25. Blinkit, in comparison, has 10-minute returns, but the policy only applies to clothing and shoes.
Kiranas also offer store credit. PP Patel, owner of Rex General Store in Mumbai, told Rest of World that many of his customers are domestic helpers who buy groceries for their employer, who pays the bill at the end of the month. The draw of this service is fading, though, as e-commerce platforms offer “buy-now-pay-later” options for shoppers who have bank accounts. “In five years, it’ll all be over,” Patel said.
In Delhi, some shopkeepers are confident about their business’s survival. Seven years ago, Balwant Singh and his mother ran one of the five grocery stores on their street in a traffic-clogged Delhi neighborhood. Today, their modest 200-square-foot outlet is one of the two that have survived. The area’s low rents have drawn hordes of students and young professionals, many of whom frequent Singh’s shop. Over time, he’s built a close rapport with them. “I know their first names, where they work, and which state they come from,” he said. “People here don’t buy in bulk; they buy a few cigarettes or eggs at a time, which is not possible to do online.” He said that most of his customers don’t have access to online credit.
Singh, 34, has a business degree, and is tech-savvy. He created a WhatsApp group for his regulars, where he takes orders and offers discounts. “It also helps us track our sales better and stay connected with our customers. I send them greetings on festivals and I even remember some of their birthdays,” he said.
Surinder Singh, 55, is a convenience store owner in a New Delhi neighborhood known for its towering apartment complexes. He remains optimistic about the future of his business. Many of his customers buy grains by weight from him at affordable prices. “You might notice the high-rises, but hidden behind them are small neighborhoods and shanties, home to thousands who rely on us for essentials like rice, lentils, oil, toothpaste, and soap,” he said. “They don’t use these apps – we’re their lifeline.”
Ananya Bhattacharya is a reporter for Rest of World covering South Asia's tech scene. She is based in Mumbai, India.
Adnan Bhat is an independent multimedia journalist based in Delhi, India.
This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.
