-By Jaya Pathak
The quick-commerce leaders of India have managed to develop their brands based on one promise, and it is the speed. The threat that Jio poses to that proposition is that Jio matches the promise of delays as long as 10 minutes headline-to-headline but exceeds the promise of delays by altering the economy of what speed can cost–at scale, and across cities, and across categories.
The step Jio is undertaking Subtly and in large amounts
Reliance has made it clear that it plans to compete in quick commerce with JioMart, with such a 30-minute delivery promise as opposed to an actual 10-minute race. In 2024, it was reported that it had a plan to roll out 30 minutes delivery in June, start in eight cities and phase its expansion to a much broader footprint, starting with grocery and then followed with categories.
The promise in time was not strategically unique about that plan, but was the fulfillment architecture. Reporting on the same, JioMart had planned to use its current network of about 19,000 stores and fulfilment centres and not develop a dark-store model immediately. As of 2025, the commentary provided by Reliance and later coverage wrote that it had pivoted: JioMart was rapidly expanding into quick hyper-local, its services were served by over 3,000 stores across 5000 pin codes, with an operational 600-odd dark stores, and was projecting average daily orders to grow 200 percent annually and 42 percent quarter to quarter.
Simultaneously, expanded coverage of Reliance has positioned the firm as doubling down its fast commerce across companies, expanding on how JioMart had already initiated quick commerce 30-minute-delivery in its grocery division and that Ajio had introduced quicker delivery windows in various cities. The directional intent can only be winnowed even when you suppose that, in execution, the distribution will be uneven over micro-markets–as is always true in Indian logistics–the intent directional, however, must be hard to deny: Reliance is training the muscle to compete on a speed basis without acting like a pure-play speed company.
Why this is important:
Fast business is not a marketing company but a logistic company.
Quick commerce has been talked about as a branding competition but on tight service-level contracts unit economics is the actual competition. Once a player is able to source inventory in relation to the customer, transverse orders with thin local nodes and is able to amortize the cost of delivery over large order frequency speed ceases to be a differentiator and becomes more of a standard.
This was created on this battlefield: zepto and Blinkit: dark stores, SKU discipline, and tight rider orchestration. But there is also a structural exposure to their model: bearing the cost of density as a construct rather than a fright-invention of the current retail footprint. The advantage of Jio, in theory at least, is that it is able to turn retail adjacency into delivery capacity, using stores as local nodes and deploying dark stores where it cannot fulfill the time promise using the store based fulfillment.
It is significant that selectivity. Reliance Retail CFO Dinesh Taluja described in Business Standard a three-kilometre range inside the network of stores as a delivery radius and that the dark stores would be located in so-called dark pockets where they could not guarantee 30 minutes of service out of stores. This type of hybrid network would become a structural benefit in quick commerce: stores provide geographic coverage, whereas dark stores allow precision, without committing the whole system to be constructed of the most expensive type of asset everywhere.
The reason Zepto and Blinkit need to be concerned
To begin with, Jio is in a position to turn the market into a more price-sensitive market without necessarily engaging in a price war. A 30-minute product can be made to be located as fast enough to capture mainstream households draining demand off 10-minute platforms where the cost-to-serve is necessarily more expensive. JioMart was reported by Economic Times to have a planned 30-minute model against Zepto, Blinkit, and Swiggy Instamart, which took less than 10-15 minutes to deliver. When a believable player makes a promise marginally slower that is at a meaningfully different effective price, consumer expectations change – and the price of extreme speed is increasingly difficult to justify.
Second, Jio has the opportunity to expand the category talk. The Reliance and other conglomerates have already been positioned by coverage as driving quick commerce into the electronics space–a move that is significant since baskets with higher price tags can more comfortably offset the cost of delivery than low-margin grocery. When a platform capable of making high frequency grocery orders and gasping at periodic missions “need it today” with electronics or general merchandise can be used it has the potential to change the profitability curve of the whole operation.
Third, Jio alters the assumptions concerning scale. In 2025, it is reported that Reliance has an operating footprint of quick hyper-local deliveries (1,000 and more cities and 5,000 pin codes) which is an indication of its desire to go beyond the metro-only playbook that characterized early quick commerce. Should this growth materialize, pure-plays will have one such strategic option as to either head with Jio into a wider map (where dilution of density and increased costs will be accepted), or remain focused and risk losing the next wave of customer habituation in tier-2 and tier-3 markets.
The greater threat to incumbents is psychological: the market has ceased to regard quick commerce as a divide category, once dominant to its own, and is now starting to view it as a distribution attribute that any big consumer platform ought to provide.
Borrowing the playbook that Jio is borrowing:
The trend that Jio has followed in the other industries has been to launch with a thesis of scale, and then recreate customer expectations based on availability and affordability rather than differentiation on a premium basis. The parallel, in quick commerce, is do not battle the incumbents on their best headline (10 minutes), but instead operate by making those offers operational (30 minutes) to battle, then raise the levels of services once the network is developed.
According to Economic Times literature, the model of JioMart was at a testing stage, where the company is supposed to have shortened delivery time again based on the feedback. It is a strategically sound decision that sequencing is made: it does not promise anything above its means at the most vulnerable point of building out the network, and preserves the optionality to narrow SLAs in future.
The next thing Zepto and Blinkit can do:
- Defend the high end use case: command the missions of the I need it now, ruthlessly and not only by speed.
- Restrict expansion of the size of private label and big-margin categories selectively, as margin is the only long-lasting gasoline of 10-minute logistics.
- Invest in predictability: consumers would be able to forgive 18 minutes, but not 40. The silent moat isJio quick commerce entry reliability.
- Expansion tier-2: make it a serious experiment rather than vanity land-grab–since Jio connectivity can seduce anyone into trying to make money where it is unprofitable.
FAQs:
1) Does JioMart really practice quick commerce or is it just in planning?
In 2024, it was reported that JioMart was ready to launch a 30 minute delivery service, and in 2025 that JioMart was by that time operating at scale, rapid hyper-local, across 1,000+ cities and 5,000 pin codes and rising fast at orders.
2) Does Jio construct dark stores such as Blinkit and Zepto?
The initial signs pointed to JioMart using its store and fulfilment ecosystem instead of being a dark store as first reported. Subsequent reports said that Reliance had operationalised “600-odd” dark stores and was still investing in them, located where pockets could not be served in the agreed time by store-based delivery.
3) To incumbents, why should it matter that it is a promise of 30 minutes and not 10 when Jio is involved?
Since the model by Jio can reposition consumer desires to spend on extreme speed, and since the scale of Jio can be reported over 1,000+ cities, the mainstream uptake of a so-called fast delivery can be quickened beyond a metro niche.
4) Does Jio intend to venture out of grocery?
The report 2024 explained that it started with grocery and expanded progressively into the other category whereas conglomerates such as Reliance that needed to push quick commerce in electronics also was explained in 2025 coverage.
5) What is the sole significant strategic strength that Jio can possess?
Reliance executives described a hybrid fulfillment network – reaching with a large store base and filling dark stores where necessary – which was touted in coverage and allows ambition of speed without investing all of the micro-market to high-cost store structure.
Read more: Top Business Magazine
