From Daily Grub to Luxury Sparkle: India’s 2024 Quick-Commerce Cart in a Nutshell

This year marked the rise of quick commerce platforms, with the segment becoming hotter than Delhi’s summers. 2024 witnessed a surge in customer adoption, as the demand for convenience reached new heights. Blinkit, Instamart, and Swiggy Instamart dominated the scene, filling their order books with an astonishing array of products—ranging from groceries, snacks, condoms, and gold to silver, and even brooms. 

The most obvious category of home essentials, like groceries and vegetables, ruled the carts. Instamart saw big spenders load up on Atta, milk, and oil, with the top five must-haves, across the country, being milk, curd, dosa batter, chips, and soft drinks. One in every 15 orders had a packet of milk, and one in every five orders had either a fruit or a vegetable. Similarly, Zepto witnessed orders of 9 lakh karelas, 1.3 lakh tindas, 77 lakh bhindis, 23 lakh lauki, and 40 lakh baigans. 

Swiggy also observed that most orders in the morning were for milk, eggs, and fruits, while in the night, snacking attacks took over with carts filling up with ice cream, cold drinks, and chips making their grand entrance between 10 PM and 4 AM.

Blinkit, on the other hand, saw consumers gorging on aerated drinks, as 1,85,17,980 Coca-Cola cans, 84,35,783 bottles of Thums Up, and 14,57,616 bottles of Maaza were ordered on the platform. A single user even ordered 1203 bottles of Sprite. About 37,82,261 tonic water cans, 1,75,64,980 packs of Maggi, and 3,03,500 UNO decks were also ordered in 2024. Interestingly, consumers on the platform ordered 55 bottles of Fevicol as well. 

Zepto also saw some fun combos of orders like dumbbells and samosas, Pooja essentials and tonic water, knives and Dettol, and momos and chocolate syrup. It also saw people search for "friends," "sukoon," and "2 BHK," probably the only things that quick commerce platforms lack today and may have tomorrow, given the speed of their expansion. 

While predominantly quick commerce has been looked at for daily essentials and small-value orders, the availability of gold on the platform has changed the game of order values. Swiggy Instamart saw an Ahmedabad resident spend a staggering ₹8,32,032 on gold coins during Dhanteras. On a much more fun side, it also saw Delhi splurge ₹4,60,000 on poker chips during Diwali.

Cities that stood out for their orders on Zepto were Bengaluru for ordering 8.25 lakh roses and more than 4 lakh condoms, Delhi for 12 lakh Lays Magic Masala and over 8 lakh mixer bottles, and Mumbai for ordering 31.5 lakh snacks between 12–4 AM.

Similarly, Swiggy saw that in 2024, Bengaluru became the ‘Poo bani Parvati’ of India, leading spends in both puja essentials and party supplies. Alongside Mumbai, the city fiercely vied for the title of party capital, ordering 1.8 times more wine and shot glasses, particularly during Diwali celebrations. The city also went on a brushing spree this year, snapping up 2,727,731 toothbrushes.