Which company is winning the 10-min grocery delivery war in India

Oct 21, 2023

The 10-min grocery delivery competition in India is heating up between three major players across India. These include: Zepto, one of the fastest growing startups in India founded by two Stanford dropouts, Zomato backed Grofers, and Swiggy’s Instamart. All of the three players have been trying to compete with each other on the time to deliver groceries to the customers. They are able to do extremely fast and convenient deliveries by setting up small “dark stores” in close proximity to the customers.

While the strategy for logistics of deliveries of all three competitors are the same, their geographical focus across India is completely different. Zepto is currently only delivering in 6 largest cities across India - Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Delhi. Grofers is delivering groceries across 26 cities in India and Instamart is delivering in 18 cities.

According to our data, Grofers is currently operating 279 “dark” stores. Instamart is operating 196 and Zepto is currently operating 100 of these stores across India.

Dark stores footprint across IndiaSource: Crustdata Alternative Data

Note: The location of the stores is not accurate and is only representational of presence of a dark store within 2 Km of the radius around it

Grofers and Instamart are not competing in same Tier-2 cities

Leaving aside the competition between all three players in Tier-1 cities in India, Grofers and Instamart are exclusively delivering to different Tier-2 cities and not competing with each other in the same city. For example, Grofers is exclusively delivering in northern cities of Jaipur, Agra, Kanpur, Chandigarh, Guwahati etc. And Instamart is operating in southern cities of Goa, Coimbatore, Vizag etc.

How fast are their operations growing?

In terms of speed of setting up new “dark” stores, Grofers is again leading the pack. Grofers has opened 80% new stores in just the last one month. Meanwhile, Zepto has grown its footprint of stores by 26% by opening 22 new stores in the last one month. Instamart is too catching up, it has grown its store count by about 18% during the same period.