This is crazy! Quick commerce has already overtaken modern trade in Bengaluru. It took only five years.
Qcomm already accounts for about 6% of Bengaluru’s retail spend. All organized modern trade chains (~150 stores) in the city combined add up to 4%.
A Bernstein note last week said that 90% of new quick commerce dark store additions in the last quarter were in pincodes they already served. The metros already have more dark stores than Bernstein’s own estimate of what the market can profitably support.
DMart isn’t even trying to win this fight anymore. It is playing defence. DMart Ready exited seven cities in a single quarter, leaving just 11 cities served. Their growth in old stores in large metros has flatlined. Overall footfall has fallen sharply after 2020, likely driven by qcomm adoption.
Reliance Retail, meanwhile, is playing on the offensive. It is turning its Smart Bazaar and Smart Point stores into dark stores for JioMart’s delivery network. Digital grocery orders were up 116% year-on-year last quarter. Growth has stayed above 100% for several quarters running, and their pitch to investors is that 20 years of transaction data and 400 million loyalty customers is an edge Blinkit and Zepto don’t have.
General trade (kiranas) is still the biggest slice of retail. This is a fight for the organized retail wallet. But that fight, modern trade has lost here in Bengaluru, and directionally, this could be the case in metros like Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad as well.