Sudhakar Adapa, Founder and CEO of BIA Brands, explained the difference between e-commerce and instant commerce and why instant commerce has to be ‘not so fast’ to become sustainable. “While e-commerce is booming these days, Quick Commerce or Q Commerce is probably the new version of e-commerce. The fundamentals of the business will remain the same, it is just about how we are going to deliver, it That’s going to change,” Mr Adapa said at the NDTV World Summit 2024.
He also said that to make the model sustainable the definition of quick would have to be changed.
“Is instant commerce going to be a sustainable thing? I would say yes and no. Yes, because it will be another type of commerce that will survive but I think the definition of instant will change. Right now the consumer wants everything. Delivery should be in less than 10 minutes and if you say 20 minutes, the consumer will say I can’t wait 10 more minutes, that’s why this is one of the few countries where instant commerce works Definition of Instant 10 Minutes will change to 60 minutes because everything cannot be delivered in 10 minutes time, it will not become such instant commerce if this model has to be sustainable,” he said.
Mr Adapa said that in today’s day and age social media has become a powerful weapon for brands: “The use of social media is across all sectors. As brands, if we are to survive then social media is a powerful weapon and The benefits that private labels have become are such that it is really giving space to smaller brands to compete with the Unilever’s and P&G’s of the world, for example, if I were to launch a cosmetics brand 10 years ago, So you need to own a brand, you need to have a manufacturing plant, a quality control department, you need to control R&D, the whole ecosystem has huge costs and a small one. It’s not possible for an entrepreneur to launch a company now, all you have to do is go to a contract manufacturer, get a few 1,000 pieces, put it online and yours. It’s a lot easier these days to have a brand.”
However, he also stressed that “everything has its advantages and disadvantages”.
“The advantage is that you can run your company with no capital, if you have a good product, you can build a company with almost nothing. The other aspect is the kind of competition there is in the market. Differentiation has become really difficult for us. But the good thing is that they have great products and the prices are also great.”
