NEW DELHI (REUTERS) – Indian grocery start-ups are luring tech-savvy customers with the promise of deliveries within 10 minutes, sparking a boom in “quick commerce”, but heating up concerns about road safety as bike riders scramble to meet tight deadlines.
Competition is already intense in India’s US$600 billion (S$807 billion) grocery retailing industry, populated by the likes of Amazon, Walmart’s Flipkart and Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance.
Now SoftBank-backed Blinkit and its rival Zepto are racing to hire staff and open stores in their bid to grab a share of the market by offering the convenience of delivery in 10 minutes, far lower than the hours, or days competitors take.
Their mission: pack groceries within a few minutes at so-called dark stores, or small warehouses in densely populated neighbourhood buildings, and send bike riders to nearby locations with about seven minutes to spare.
“It’s a threat to the larger players,” Mr Ashwin Mehta, a lead IT sector…