Quick commerce’s next $90B is a trust problem

Quick commerce won its first users with a deceptively simple promise: the product you already know, at your door in minutes. But the next leg of the category will not be won by minutes. Google and Redseer Strategy Consultants project that India’s quick commerce market will climb from about $13 billion in FY26 to $90 billion by FY31, with monthly transacting users crossing 100 million.

This festive season, the signal is similarly strong: quick commerce sales are projected to grow 110% year on year and take about 18% of total online festive spending.

The shift from top-up to trust

The first wave was built on urgent, top-up jobs: milk tonight, a charger cable now. As Redseer partner Kushal Bhatnagar put it:

“The path to a US$90 billion market is more complex because much of the remaining spend does not behave that way.”

Grocery decisions run on pack size, price and familiarity. Beauty and electronics run on comparison, reviews and reassurance. In behavioural terms, this is a move from an immediate-gratification job to a considered-trust job. The same app that feels effortless for a top-up may feel risky for a monthly pantry or a premium gadget.

Two growth engines, two behaviour sets

Metros are expected to deliver about 60% of incremental growth through FY31, with quick commerce’s share of metro retail spending rising from about 6% to 20–23%. The number of metro users could nearly double from 28 million to nearly 50 million.

Non-metros, by contrast, hold an addressable pool of about 200 million online shoppers across more than 300 cities. The report estimates that 55–60 million of them could become monthly transacting quick commerce users by FY31. Crucially, more than 95% of surveyed non-users already know quick commerce exists. Awareness is not the blocker; freshness, basket size and purchase trust are.

What brands should do with this

The report’s prescription is less about advertising harder and more about reducing perceived risk and raising planned relevance:

• Drive planned replenishment: bulk packs, stock visibility, value pricing and targeted restock prompts can shift shoppers from top-ups to monthly pantry runs.
• Borrow category reassurance: demos, creator content, reviews and clearer authenticity, replacement and return policies can unlock beauty and electronics.
• Localise non-metro trial: regional products, budget trial packs, flexible delivery slots and regional-language search lower the cost of first use.

The bigger marketing implication is that quick commerce is entering the trust and consideration stage of category growth. Early adopters bought on convenience. The next tranche of buyers—whether a metro household moving its pantry online or a smaller-city shopper trying fresh produce—will buy on confidence.

For brand managers, that means being present earlier in the journey: not just as a product on a dark-store shelf, but as a reassuring explanation in search, video and creator-led content before the purchase is made.

The next phase of quick commerce will depend on connecting consumer discovery with hyper-local fulfilment, the report concludes. That is a distribution problem only on the surface. Underneath, it is a persuasion problem: how do you make a fast purchase feel like a safe one?

Source: ETBrandEquity.com