WPP: Quick commerce took an FMCG client to 70-80% of sales

WPP Media India has formalised a shift many Indian marketers have been feeling: product launches are no longer campaign events that end at a checkout. They are increasingly born, tested and scaled inside commerce ecosystems.

A playbook built for commerce maturity

The agency’s new release, From Concept to Scale: The Commerce-First Launch Playbook for India, argues that marketplaces, quick commerce platforms and retail media networks can do more than sell. They can reveal demand, validate concepts and act as a cheap early read before a brand commits to a national push.

Sairam Ranganathan, head of e-commerce at WPP Media India, described the playbook as a “checklist or a cheat code equivalent kind of thing” for clients at different stages of commerce maturity.

Behavioural proof over stated intent

The central idea is that what shoppers actually do carries more weight than what they say they would do. Instead of leaning only on surveys and traditional research, brands can watch search queries, clicks, abandoned carts, reviews, ratings and repeat purchases inside commerce environments.

Ritika Taneja, senior vice president of e-commerce at WPP Media India, calls commerce a strategic ground for identifying white spaces and commercial opportunities rather than a standalone sales channel.

The quick commerce evidence

The shift is being driven by hard numbers. For one large FMCG client, Ranganathan says quick commerce moved from under a fifth of sales to as much as 70-80% within a few years. That is the kind of swing that changes not just budget allocation but how a brand thinks about time-to-market and assortment.

As quick commerce expands beyond metro pockets and into more categories, it is becoming a demand signal in its own right.

What this means for launch teams

• Mine marketplace search, cart and review data to spot white spaces before product development.
• Test a minimum viable offer in a live marketplace and read repeat-purchase signals before scaling nationally.
• Measure launches on new customer acquisition, repeat purchases and brand equity, not only ROAS.

The next frontier

WPP also flags non-metro India as a growing source of first-time e-commerce buyers. These consumers are feeding new behavioural data into the system and expanding the definition of the target customer beyond Delhi and Mumbai.

Both executives say artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded across commerce planning, activation, optimisation and measurement. The real question, Ranganathan suggests, is no longer whether to use AI but where it should be applied and how it works alongside human judgment.

Source: Afaqs!