Reliance Retail Enters Quick Commerce Market, Competing with Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart

Reliance Retail is stepping into the booming quick commerce market, intensifying competition with Blinkit (owned by Zomato), Swiggy Instamart, and BigBasket. The largest retailer in India has launched quick commerce services in select areas of Navi Mumbai and Bengaluru through its e-commerce platform, JioMart, starting last weekend.

Initially, the service will offer grocery items from about 3,000 Reliance retail stores across the country. Later, it plans to add value fashion items and small electronics like smartphones, laptops, and speakers. All orders will be fulfilled from Reliance’s own stores, including Reliance Digital and Trends.

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Reliance aims to expand its quick commerce operations nationwide by the end of this month, with plans to deliver most orders within 10-15 minutes and the rest within 30 minutes. The company will utilize its logistics service Grab for deliveries.

However, unlike its competitors, Reliance does not intend to establish dark stores or neighborhood warehouses, which could make it challenging to deliver orders quickly in large cities with heavy traffic. To attract customers, Reliance will not charge any delivery, platform, or surge fees, regardless of the order size. The company is particularly focusing on smaller cities and towns that have not yet been tapped by quick commerce platforms like Blinkit.

Reliance plans to offer a larger selection of products—between 10,000 to 12,000 stock-keeping units—by linking its entire store inventory to the quick commerce platform, surpassing the options available from its rivals.

Ultimately, the company aims to serve 1,150 cities across 5,000 pin codes where it operates grocery stores. Reliance is targeting a larger market share in smaller towns that have not yet been serviced by quick commerce firms.

A company executive explained that Reliance has changed its delivery approach for JioMart. Previously, deliveries were scheduled over 1-2 days, but now, grocery orders will be delivered quickly—one order per delivery bike or cycle, covering a 3 km radius from each store.

Earlier this year, Reliance had tried to shorten JioMart’s delivery times to a few hours under a hyperlocal initiative. It has now refined this to a 10-30 minute delivery window. “This has become a top requirement in the market,” the executive added.

Devangshu Dutta, CEO of consulting firm Third Eyesight, mentioned that Reliance might adopt a mixed delivery strategy—using quick commerce for nearby areas and scheduled deliveries for farther locations. He noted that since Reliance is in acquisition mode for market share in quick commerce, it’s expected to charge no transaction fees and offer greater discounts.

Quick commerce is rapidly growing, representing 30-35% of total online sales for fast-moving consumer goods companies.