What Is Quick Commerce? Everything E-commerce Brands Should Know
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Key Highlights
- Southeast Asia and South Korea are building quick commerce on existing stores and delivery apps, while other countries rely on dedicated dark stores.
- Selling through quick commerce (Q-commerce) spreads a brand’s stock across many small stores, each carrying a narrow range chosen for its neighbourhood.
- Q-commerce channels capture urgent, high-intent purchases, though brands pay for app visibility.
- Quick commerce platforms are moving into new categories and starting to buy stock directly, which brings supplier-style terms into the brand relationship.
Quick commerce platforms, also known as Q-commerce channels, sell everyday products through mobile apps and fill each order from a small local warehouse called a dark store. Q-commerce channels ask brands to keep stock in many small locations at once, which changes how brands plan inventory and handle orders.
A dark store, also called a micro-fulfilment centre, is a small warehouse closed to walk-in shoppers and laid out for fast picking. Each dark store holds a limited selection of fast-selling products for the households in its delivery area.
Brands that plan quick commerce stock as a channel of its own are better placed to avoid empty dark store shelves and orders sold twice across channels. In this article, you’ll uncover how this business model works across Asia Pacific and what it requires of a brand’s operations.
1. What is Quick Commerce?
Quick commerce is a form of e-commerce built around purchases made at the moment of need, with delivery measured in minutes instead of days. Kearney’s 2026 survey of US consumers found that 72% of regular quick commerce users shop only when a need arises, compared with 41% of non-users. [1]
For a brand, quick commerce is a different sales channel that needs its own product range and stock positions alongside marketplaces and webstores.
2. Quick Commerce vs E-commerce vs Traditional Commerce
Quick commerce gives shoppers speed on a narrow range of everyday items. Standard e-commerce offers a much wider catalogue with slower delivery, and traditional commerce lets shoppers buy on the spot in a physical store.
| Factor | Quick commerce | E-commerce | Traditional commerce |
| Delivery time | Minutes | One or more days | Immediate, in-store |
| Product range | Narrow, fast-selling items | Very wide catalogue | Limited by shelf space |
| Where stock sits | Dark stores near shoppers | Central warehouses | On store shelves |
| How customers order | Mobile app | App or website | In person |
| Typical basket | Small top-up order | Planned or larger order | Any size |
| Best suited to | Urgent everyday needs | Browsing and price comparison | Seeing products before buying |
3. Why is Quick Commerce Growing Rapidly?
Quick commerce grows fastest in crowded cities where shoppers want everyday items soon after they run out. The scenarios below help explain that growth.
- Dense networks of local stock let each store serve many households within a short ride. Amazon’s 30-minute Amazon Now service in the US runs from a network of smaller locations placed close to where customers live and work, which shortens the distance delivery riders travel. [2]
- Low online grocery adoption left room for quick commerce to grow in India, according to Bain & Company. Since quick commerce launched there in 2020, e-grocery penetration has risen roughly fivefold to about 1.5% of India’s overall grocery market in 2025. [3]
- Large delivery app audiences give retailers a ready customer base. In South Korea, the four largest delivery apps had about 42.19 million combined monthly active users in July 2026, according to WiseApp data reported by Seoul Economic Daily. [4]
4. Quick Commerce Around the World
a. Quick Commerce in APAC
Asia Pacific is the world’s largest quick commerce region, holding 45.8% of global revenue in 2025, when Grand View Research valued the worldwide market at US$ 244.7 billion. [5]
The region’s markets have built the channel in different ways, which shapes how much stock and marketing a brand should commit to each one.
Southeast Asia builds quick commerce on existing stores
Southeast Asia’s quick commerce gross merchandise value (GMV) reached US$ 7.3 billion in 2025, equal to 4.6% of the region’s e-commerce. [6] Most services add on-demand delivery to existing supermarket and convenience store networks. [6] Momentum Works found shopper demand to be a bigger constraint in the region than delivery capacity, so brands entering the channel there need a marketing budget as well as stock. [6]
Some operators also run their own stores. foodpanda operates pandamart cloud stores alongside its network of retail partners. [7] Momentum Works also warns that operators copying one model across the region will be disappointed, since markets such as Indonesia and Vietnam behave differently. [8]
South Korea plugs convenience stores into delivery apps
South Korean retailers are joining delivery apps instead of building their own delivery networks. About 20,000 convenience stores now run quick commerce through Baemin, and CU’s quick commerce sales rose 205% in July and August 2026. [4] Supermarket chain Lotte Super delivers about 3,000 items within an hour from more than 170 stores through a partnership with Coupang Eats. [4]
b. Quick commerce in India
India’s quick commerce is concentrated in the largest metros. GMV from quick commerce reached US$ 10 to 11 billion in 2025, equal to 16% to 17% of the country’s e-retail GMV. [3] Two-thirds of newly opened centres are in the 10 largest cities, so demand remains concentrated in major metros. [3]
c. Quick Commerce in Europe
The rollout of dark stores in major European cities is driving quick commerce growth. As groceries and essential products are items that people buy often, they bring repeat orders and stronger customer retention, which strengthens the quick commerce model. [9]
KBV Research forecasts that the European quick commerce market will reach US$ 139.9 billion by 2031 and grow at 20.6% a year through 2033. The UK is the region’s largest quick commerce market, and KBV expects it to stay in the lead through 2033, growing at 19% a year. France is forecast to grow faster, at 21.4% a year, with Germany at 19.6%. Groceries and staples remain the biggest category for quick commerce in these regions because households top them up often, while personal care, beauty, and non-prescription health products are adding new demand. [10]
5. How Quick Commerce Works
A quick commerce order moves through five steps between checkout and the customer’s door. Most of the time saving happens before the order is placed, because the stock already sits in a dark store a short ride away.
- The customer orders through a quick commerce app that lists only products available from the dark store serving the delivery address.
- The platform’s software sends the order to that dark store’s picking queue as soon as payment clears.
- Store staff pick and pack the items using the store’s warehouse management system (WMS), which shows where each product sits and confirms every scan.
- A rider delivers the order from the dark store to the customer’s door. Grand View Research notes that dense urban areas allow shorter delivery radii and better use of delivery fleets. [5] The short last-mile delivery leg decides whether the promised delivery time is met.
- The app tracks orders from packing to delivery, reducing customer queries about late deliveries.
6. Key Components of a Quick Commerce Business Model
In the dedicated dark store model, platforms such as foodpanda’s pandamart in Singapore run the stores and the delivery network, so a brand’s main task is getting the right stock into those stores and keeping it there. [7] The components below set how much stock a brand needs in the channel and how often that stock moves.
a. Dark store network
Quick commerce platforms place dark stores close enough to customers to meet the promised delivery time, so a large city can host dozens of sites. Each site holds only a few units of each product, which spreads a brand’s stock thinly across many locations.
b. Localised product range
Each dark store stocks what sells best in its own neighbourhood, and the selection changes from one area to the next. foodpanda, for example, uses hyperlocal demand trends to guide the range and stock planning in each of its pandamart stores in Singapore. [7]
c. Fast replenishment
Small stores sell through their shelves quickly, so quick commerce platforms restock them often. Kearney describes the supply chain shift behind this model as a move from forecast accuracy to responsiveness, using demand sensing and inventory placed closer to demand. [1]
Brands supplying quick commerce platforms need demand forecasts at city or store level, because national averages hide large differences between neighbourhoods.
7. Quick Commerce Fulfilment Models and Who Holds the Stock
Quick commerce orders are fulfilled through four main models, and each model sets where a brand’s stock sits and who manages it. Brands selling across several platforms often work with more than one model at once.
| Model | How orders are fulfilled | Who holds the stock | Examples |
| Dedicated dark stores | Picked by platform staff in platform-run warehouses | The platform, on supply terms it sets | foodpanda’s pandamart (Singapore) [7] |
| Retail store partnerships | Picked from the shelves or back rooms of existing shops | The retail partner | Convenience chains such as CU on Baemin, and Lotte Super on Coupang Eats (South Korea) [4] |
| Marketplace-integrated delivery | Fast-delivery service inside a large marketplace app | The marketplace or its sellers | Amazon Now inside the Amazon app (US) [2] |
| Brand-run rapid delivery | Shipped from the brand’s own stores or warehouses | The brand | Retailers with dense store networks |
Retail partnerships avoid the cost of building new sites, but stock accuracy then sits with the partner, so items can appear available on the app while the shelf is empty. A brand running its own rapid delivery needs an order management system that sends each order to the nearest location holding stock.
8. Benefits of Quick Commerce for Retailers and Brands
The benefits of quick commerce for retailers and brands are sales won from shoppers who switch brands easily and from shoppers who arrive ready to buy. Each benefit applies only where a brand’s products are in stock at the nearby dark store, since the app hides items the store cannot supply.
Shoppers switch to the brand that is available first. Kearney found that regular quick commerce users in the US are more willing than other shoppers to switch brands when another one can meet the need faster. [1] A brand stocked in nearby dark stores can win sales from competitors that are out of stock.
Quick commerce shoppers buy with clear intent. In India, visits to quick commerce apps turn into orders about eight times as often as visits to standard e-commerce sites. [3] A brand that is listed and in stock at the right store may be better positioned to capture that intent.
9. Challenges Brands Face in Quick Commerce
Most quick commerce challenges for brands come from spreading small amounts of stock across many stores and competing for attention on crowded apps. Uncertain demand outside the largest cities adds risk for brands planning a national rollout.
a. Stock-outs and waste at store level
A forecasting error empties a dark store’s shelf quickly, and the app then shows the product as unavailable to every customer in that store’s delivery area. Overstocking causes a different loss for perishable goods such as dairy and fresh produce, which expire before they sell. Sharing sell-through data with each platform gives both sides an earlier warning when a store is running low.
b. One stock pool shared across channels
Stock committed to quick commerce usually comes from the same inventory that serves a brand’s marketplace and webstore orders. Slow stock updates between systems can lead to the same units being sold twice, and the later orders cancelled.
An order management system such as Anchanto Order Management allocates inventory to each sales channel in real time and can reserve stock ahead of major campaigns, so quick commerce demand does not oversell units promised to other channels.
c. The cost of visibility on crowded apps
Quick commerce shoppers search for a specific product and check out within minutes, so placement near the top of an app’s search results and home screen shapes which brand they pick.
Kearney expects marketing to move from campaigns planned weeks ahead to always-on relevance in moments of need. [1] Paid placement takes a larger share of the margin on a small top-up basket than the same spend does on a larger e-commerce order.
d. Unproven demand outside large cities
A quick commerce platform turns a profit only once each dark store handles enough daily orders to cover its rent and staffing costs. Bain & Company reports that profitability has improved in India’s largest cities, but adoption and unit economics beyond the top metro and Tier 1 cities, roughly the 50 most populous, remain unproven. [3] Brands following platforms into smaller cities should plan for lower sales per store.
10. Future Trends in Quick Commerce
Quick commerce platforms are expanding into new product categories and changing how they source stock. Health products are a likely next category for quick commerce. Kearney found that fewer than one in five US consumers regularly use delivery in under 30 minutes, yet 80% of consumers in the same analysis, including people who do not use quick commerce today, say they would use ultra-fast delivery for an urgent health need. [1]
Brands in health and other non-grocery categories should prepare a short range of fast-selling items sized for quick commerce listings to leverage this trend.
11. Running Quick Commerce Alongside Other Sales Channels
Quick commerce adds one more channel to an operation that many brands already run across marketplaces and their own webstores. The brands that successfully integrate more channels into their commerce operations are those that already manage every channel from one system.
Anchanto Order Management is built for omnichannel retail across various online and offline sales platforms. It captures orders from more than 70 integrated sales channels and unifies inventory across warehouses and physical stores. The system connects retail stores through point-of-sale (POS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration and supports click-and-collect, so online and in-store orders draw on the same stock.
Talk to our experts to see how Anchanto Order Management fits into your commerce operations.
FAQs
1. How is quick commerce different from e-commerce?
Quick commerce is a specialised part of e-commerce built around speed for a narrow range of everyday products. Brands usually manage the two as separate channels, each with its own product range and stock allocation.
2. What products are commonly sold through quick commerce?
Grocery and staples are the largest quick commerce category, at 33.7% of global revenue in 2025, and Grand View Research projects personal care and beauty to grow fastest through 2033. [5] Quick commerce platforms also stock items people need at short notice, such as phone chargers and baby care products.
3. What technology does quick commerce require?
Quick commerce platforms run their own software for dark store operations and rider dispatch. A brand needs integrations with these platforms for product data and stock levels to avoid going out of stock. An order management system (OMS) makes the best sense here, especially if the brand also sells through marketplaces or its own webstore.
4. Which companies operate quick commerce models in Southeast Asia?
Grab, ShopeeFood, and foodpanda are the platforms driving quick commerce in Southeast Asia, according to Momentum Works. These food delivery platforms already had rider networks and large user bases before they added quick commerce. [8]
References
[1] Kearney.com – The rise of real-time commerce
[2] Aboutamazon.com – Amazon rolls out 30-minute delivery on thousands of groceries and essentials
[3] Bain.com – How India Shops Online 2026
[4] En.sedaily.com – Korean Retailers Expand Quick Commerce Through Delivery App Tie-Ups
[5] Grandviewresearch.com – Quick Commerce Market (2026 – 2033)
[6] Momentum.asia – Quick Commerce in Southeast Asia 2026
[7] Foodpanda.com – foodpanda boosts bigger grocery runs with new, upsized pandamart stores
[8] Thelowdown.momentum.asia – The SEA quick commerce playbook isn’t China’s or India’s
[9] Globalriskcommunity.com – Europe E-Commerce Market 2026
[11] Outlookbusiness.com – Eternal Q4FY26 Results: Revenue Surges 186%, Cons Net Profit Up 346%