Quick-commerce or Q-commerce is the future of an industry worth 46.2 billion dollars in India i.e., the e-commerce industry. With the growth of the IT sector in India, E-commerce first spread its arms in 1995 and since then it has been an enormous success. Quick-commerce has revamped the old e-commerce supply chain with modern and optimized solutions.
Quick-commerce simply means, the quickest way of buying and selling over the internet. The question arises, Why is it the next big thing? Well, the answer is not that difficult. Who doesn’t want to get their deliveries within 10-30 mins? No one… With the adoption of Quick-commerce, every business can revamp their whole supply chain by shortening and optimizing their LM.
The new way of e-commerce shortens the Last-mile by changing and shortening the supply-chain process with modern concepts like dark stores, local rider onboarding, and on-demand manufacturing. Let’s understand the structure of the Quick-Commerce supply chain…
First, the customer places an order → Then the order is received by the nearest retail store → After packaging, the order is handed over to the delivery person → Doorstep delivery to the end customer. The whole process of Q-commerce is completed within 10-30 minutes.
With the help of local store onboarding and dark store model, the manufacturers can reach their customers directly within a minimum time frame. A short supply chain not only fastens the delivery but also enhances the quality of the delivered order.
With the changing times, the e-commerce industry is flourishing with future-friendly developments but to stay ahead in the rising competition, e-com players need to switch from the traditional ways. As the structure of the Q-commerce model has been discussed earlier, it is important to understand its need in the current era of the industrial revolution.
Massive advantages of the 10 minutes delivery model have benefitted both the customers and the manufacturers and that is why many startups are investing in this model.
Lightning Fast Delivery: The shorter supply chain and the dark store model enables the manufacturer to deliver the order within 10-30 minutes.
No Overstocking and Wastage: Unlike the traditional supply chain, an item is only produced when the customer places an order for the same. With on-demand manufacturing, the quick commerce model reduces excess production and stocking.
Higher Customer Satisfaction: With faster delivery customers also want quality products and because of fewer elements in the supply chain the quality of the product doesn’t deteriorate. Thus, the manufacturers can achieve higher customer satisfaction with quality products.
Better Insights of Customer Behavior: The network of the pre-established local retail stores is extremely persistent to be ignored and utilizing that potential, brings the manufacturer close to his/her customers.
Increased Consumer Purchasing Power: This model optimizes the value chain by eliminating the undeserved profit shares consumed by the distributors and wholesalers and this increases the purchasing power of the consumer as well.
Higher Visibility: As the dark stores are scattered locally; they stock lesser inventories which allow the business owners to keep a real-time check on the inventory levels and helps in accurate inventory audits.
Reduced CAPEX & OPEX: The q-commerce model diminishes the need for huge warehouses and storage facilities which automatically saves up a lot of costs. Also, the dark stores can be maintained with a minimal cost implication which ultimately helps the company to optimize its whole supply chain.
As the Quick commerce model is developing day by day, the benefits of this model are skyrocketing at an extreme pace. The startups have already started adopting this business model but legacy brands still need to switch from their traditional practices. With the rising competition in the e-com industry, the Indian e-com players need to adopt this model soon as Q-commerce is the key to next-gen e-commerce.