No ‘10-Minute’ Promises: What India’s Quick Commerce Reset Really Signals

The government asking quick commerce platforms to stop advertising “10-minute deliveries” is less about slowing India’s fastest retail model and more about reframing the risks it creates. Policymakers are trying to address rider safety and labour concerns without taking apart a business model that has already become part of everyday urban life.

The instruction applies to leading platforms such as Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto, and its effect has been immediate. Marketing language across apps and public campaigns has quietly changed. The promise of extreme speed has been softened, even as delivery times on the ground remain largely unchanged.

This is not a ban on fast delivery. Nor is it an attempt to rein in quick commerce itself. The intervention focuses narrowly on assurances made to consumers, reflecting the view that publicly committing to ultra-fast timelines can incentivise unsafe behaviour among delivery partners operating in dense, traffic-heavy cities.

Several companies have complied by recalibrating communication while maintaining that their logistics networks, store density and rider allocation models remain intact. The fact that actual delivery times in major cities have not materially slowed since the decision only underscores how deeply speed is hard-wired into the model.

This concern has emerged early in India because of the sheer scale at which platform labour has grown. According to NITI Aayog, India’s gig and platform workforce stood at 7.7 million in 2020-21 and is projected to rise to 23.5 million by 2029-30. When delivery timelines become service guarantees, labour risk becomes a policy issue.

Dark Stores
Quick commerce works because it is deeply local. Small dark stores are embedded in neighbourhoods, stocked with a narrow, fast-moving range and built to serve only a short delivery radius. Much of this network came up rapidly after the COVID disruption, when doorstep delivery stopped being a convenience and turned into a basic expectation. Once in place, it rewired expectations around how quickly everyday essentials should arrive.

By industry estimates, Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto together now run close to 3,000 such dark stores across India’s cities. That scale has changed more than delivery timelines. It has changed how people shop. Quick commerce is no longer an occasional splurge. It is woven into everyday replenishment. Consumers use these apps for planned shopping as well as for forgotten items, last-minute purchases and urgent top-ups.

Even without explicit “10-minute” promises, platforms will continue to compete on speed because that is what the model — and consumer behaviour — now demands. Fast fulfilment is built into the system, advertised or not.

The growth numbers explain why regulators are stepping in now. Quick commerce accounted for over two-thirds of all e-grocery orders in 2024, with the market growing nearly fivefold to $6–7 billion since 2022, according to a Bain–Flipkart report. Growth of over 40% annually is expected through 2030, fuelled by wider category offerings, deeper urban penetration and a steadily expanding user base.

What matters for policymakers and investors is how quickly consumer behaviour, logistics infrastructure and labour participation have moved together. Quick commerce has become a visible node in India’s gig economy expansion, with delivery partners central to the service promise. That is why delivery-time commitments have drawn regulatory attention here earlier than in traditional e-commerce.

The current intervention should be read as an attempt to shape norms before risk crystallises at scale. It marks the beginning of a more explicit policy framework around platform labour, service guarantees and urban logistics, even if it arrives first through advertising language rather than formal rules.

Three questions now loom large. Will regulators move beyond marketing claims to define clearer norms around delivery targets, rider workloads and pay structures? Can platforms preserve speed while adjusting labour practices to meet tighter expectations? And where will the next phase of growth come from? Will platforms keep extracting incremental efficiency from already crowded metros, or attempt a more careful expansion into Tier-2 cities, where distances are longer, traffic behaves differently and the economics are far less forgiving?

For now, the core remains unchanged. Quick commerce in India is still fast, still growing and still altering how urban retail works. What has shifted is the vocabulary around speed, not the machinery that makes it possible.

Also Read: Why Gig Workers Need Binding Regulation, Not Just Promises