A ten-minute delivery is a genuinely remarkable thing. The fact that you can wake up, realise you’re out of milk, and have it at your door before your coffee finishes brewing—that’s not logistics, that’s a lifestyle shift. India’s quick commerce platforms built that promise, marketed it brilliantly, and got millions of urban consumers hooked on to it. They also, in doing so, raised the bar for themselves in a way that’s increasingly difficult to clear. Because when you’ve told someone, they can trust you with their kitchen, a bad delivery isn’t just an operational hiccup. It’s a broken promise delivered to their doorstep.
When FSSAI recently issued a notice to Blinkit, following viral consumer complaints about spoiled groceries, it put a spotlight on a tension that has been building quietly in the background of India’s q-commerce boom. The sector is projected to grow at a 67 per cent CAGR between 2023 and 2028, according to industry estimates. At that pace, the gaps in operations don’t stay hidden for long.
The complaints were already there
The Blinkit notice wasn’t a one-off. In June 2025, Maharashtra’s FDA suspended Zepto’s Dharavi dark store licence after finding spoiled food and fungal growth on the premises. A Blinkit dark store in Pune was shut around the same time for operating without a valid licence and with unsanitary food storage. Swiggy Instamart had its own viral moment when a Reddit user posted proof that their 1,850-gram vegetable order arrived 570 grams short—a small issue, but the kind that spreads via the Internet easily.
A 2024 NielsenIQ survey found that 68 per cent of Indian consumers would abandon a quick commerce platform after a single bad experience with spoiled goods. One bad order and you could lose the customer. At scale, that’s not a rounding error.
The trust that travels the last mile
Quick commerce brands have invested heavily in building brand equity with campaigns around speed, reliability, and the ease of a life where you never really run out of anything. The trouble is that every one of those campaigns sets an expectation that has to be met at the door, every single time.
“Quick commerce is not merely selling speed; it is selling delegated trust. Consumers are allowing these platforms into their kitchens and daily consumption habits. When a quality issue goes viral, convenience quickly gets reframed as carelessness, and the brand promise starts working against the brand,” says Vinay Babani, Executive Director at SRV Media.
For FMCG companies riding the q-commerce wave, this creates a particular kind of anxiety, because they don’t control the last mile, they own the relationship with the consumer. “The moment of delivery is the moment of truth,” says Ashish Khandelwal, Managing Director of BL Agro.
“Consumers do not differentiate between the manufacturer, the platform, the warehouse, or the delivery partner. They simply evaluate whether the brand fulfilled its promise or not,” he adds.
Richa Khandelwal, Founder and Managing Director of Leads Brand Connect, shares, “A brand can invest many years and resources into building trust via communications, engaging stories, product innovations, and consumer engagement, but one bad experience with your product ruins all these efforts immediately.”
Who bears the cost
When something goes wrong, accountability gets passed around like a hot potato. Platforms point to brands, brands point to platforms, and the consumer—holding a bag of spoiled curd—doesn’t particularly care whose fault it is.
“Both sides suffer from this trust deficit, but the weight of it falls more on the brand,” says Richa Khandelwal. “Consumers might be aware that logistics and storage are controlled by the platform, but when an order arrives with any problems, consumers tend to assume that these are quality issues of the brand.”
Ashish Khandelwal is candid about what that means for advertising investment. He mentions, “If a portion of our advertising spend is building an expectation that the delivery infrastructure cannot consistently fulfil, then that portion of spend is not just wasted, it is actively counterproductive.”
The cost of moving fast
There’s a reason quality has lagged. For most of its short life, quick commerce in India has been a race for cities, for dark stores, for market share. When you’re moving that fast, a splashy campaign is easier to greenlight than a cold chain audit.
Independent marketing consultant Ashok Lalla frames the trade-off plainly. He adds, “It’s easier to run high-visibility campaigns than it is to ensure a consistent, high-quality product delivery and experience. But q-commerce brands are realising that the quality of what they sell is what will help build loyalty. Otherwise, they will struggle with getting repeat purchases and will need to constantly invest in new customer acquisition and offering deep discounts to buyers.”
Babani adds, “The category has understandably over-indexed on acquisition, discounts and visibility during its growth phase. But as the market matures, the source of differentiation must shift. In quick commerce, the next competitive advantage will come less from who shouts louder and more from who delivers consistently, safely and reliably.”
Getting the order right
The argument isn’t against advertising. It’s about what the advertising is built on. “It should not be viewed as backend versus brand-building,” says Babani. “The real question is sequencing. If operations are weak, advertising only amplifies the gap between promise and reality. The smartest q-commerce brands will build operational proof first, then use communication to turn that proof into consumer trust.”
Lalla says it with characteristic economy. He points out, “Advertising and brand building are important, but without the former, it’s like having a shiny car body whose tyres are flat.”
The path forward isn’t complicated to describe, even if it’s hard to execute. Brands and platforms need to move beyond transactional partnerships built on listings and promotional calendars. Ashish Khandelwal calls for quality-based accountability—where delivery conditions, freshness standards, and complaint rates start influencing commercial incentives.
The FSSAI notice is perhaps less a warning shot and more a reality check—for an industry that has moved fast enough to leave some things behind. The demand is real, the growth is real, and nobody is questioning the model. But at some point, the 10-minute promise has to be about more than the clock.
