10 Things to Look for in Your Quick Commerce Platform in India

When every other enterprise ecommerce brand is offering a vast catalog, personalized deals, and discounted prices, how can your business stand out?

By differentiating on deliveries and adopting quick commerce and going for quick hyperlocal ecommerce deliveries is the new success mantra. 

With speed becoming the ultimate differentiator, quick commerce has moved from a nice-to-have to a growth essential. Businesses that tap into hyperlocal delivery models are not just meeting expectations, they are outpacing competitors.

But just how fast is quick commerce growing?

How Quick Commerce Is Changing Indian Ecommerce

Quick commerce is rapidly becoming synonymous with ecommerce in India. As customer demand for faster deliveries surges, brands across sectors, from FMCG and daily essentials to fashion, pharma, beauty, and even B2B enterprises, are making swift moves to join the q-commerce wave.

 Let’s look at the growth numbers.

Market Value

• $3.34 billion is the market value of quick commerce in 2024 
• $5.5 billion is the forecasted q-commerce market value by 2025
• $9.95 billion is the forecasted q-commerce market value by 2029
• ~3X growth in Quick Commerce market size from 2024-2029

Source: Chryseum, Business Standard

• 40% increase in monthly transacting q-commerce users in 2024
• 36% increase in average monthly orders per customer from 2021-2024

Source: TeamLease, Business Standard

• 2.7% in 2025 
• 4.0% by 2029
• 48% increase in user penetration from 2025-2029
• 60.6m users is the estimated quick commerce user penetration by 2029

Source: Statista

The data signals a strong, sustained shift toward faster, hyperlocal delivery models, with both user adoption and order volumes accelerating rapidly. As quick commerce scales beyond essentials, it's clear the market is evolving toward speed-driven convenience and brands that adapt early stand to gain a significant edge.

Dark Stores Quick Commerce Model Vs Dealer Network Powered Quick Commerce 

The quick commerce model initially took off with dark store-led operations, a time and resource-intensive approach that only large enterprises with deep pockets could sustain. However, the emerging dealer network-powered model is changing the game, offering a more agile, cost-effective, and scalable alternative by leveraging existing local inventory and infrastructure. 

Here’s how they stack up in speed, scalability and reach.

How does the Traditional Dark Store-Based Quick Commerce Model Work?

In the traditional inventory-based quick commerce model, products are stocked in dark stores or micro-fulfilment centres. Orders are processed and dispatched directly from these hubs for ultra-fast doorstep delivery.

Here is how dark store-based quick commerce businesses work:

• The Q-Commerce brand builds dark stores for multiple locations in India
• They stock a large inventory at each dark store to cater to buyer demands
• Employ a fleet of delivery boys, store managers etc. for quick delivery 

This setup delivers fast hyperlocal orders but at a high operational cost, making it feasible mostly for large-scale players. For businesses looking to scale quick commerce without burning capital, there is a fresh and practical solution which leverages existing seller and dealer networks.

How to Build a Dealer-Powered Quick Commerce Brand?

As the name suggests, a dealer-powered quick commerce marketplace leverages the existing infrastructure and inventory of local sellers or dealers to offer a wide range of products through the brand’s quick commerce platform.

Here’s how you can quickly build a disruptive dealer-powered hyperlocal ecommerce marketplace:

• Build a multi store multi vendor marketplace within a city or across the country 
• Onboard multiple local sellers and build a diverse catalogue with their inventory
• Leverage the sellers’ existing delivery boys and familiarity with the locality to excel with hyperlocal ecommerce 
• Onboard last-mile delivery partners to streamline your brand’s fulfilment

Unlike the dark store-based model, this innovative dealer-powered quick commerce solution enables enterprises to go to market in record time and effortlessly scale into new regions or product categories, simply by onboarding sellers from diverse niches.

However, to build an online store and app that can support such a vast and complex multi-seller ecosystem, businesses need a flexible, scalable platform with built-in tools for vendor management, multi-store set up, real-time inventory sync and hyperlocal fulfilment capabilities.

10 Things to Look for in Your Quick Commerce Platform in India 

Venturing into the Q-commerce arena with a dealer-powered quick commerce brand is a smart move but only if your enterprise ecommerce platform can keep up with the requirements and changing demands of the market. 

From a robust multi vendor solution, to multi-store set up with centralised control and real-time inventory sync along with hyperlocal ecommerce andl delivery solutions, here are 10 must-have features to make your quick commerce platform ready for India’s dynamic market.

1. Flexibility and Scalability

When you plan to build an online store for your hyperlocal business, you need ecommerce solutions that make it easy to quickly adapt to the changing market dynamics. A rigid platform that fails to offer quick alterations, hinders the growth of your business. To be able to build tailored solutions for the customized needs of your local customers, you need a highly flexible and scalable ecommerce solution.   

Built on the most advanced MEAN stack technology, StoreHippo offers inherently scalable ecommerce solutions for your business. StoreHippo offers peak-load tolerance during seasonal peaks and 99.99% uptime with autoscaling and redundant server architecture even when your brand grows exponentially. StoreHippo  quick commerce platform can be tweaked inside out unlike other platforms that are limited to the front-end changes. You can seamlessly plan for the strategic growth of your hyperlocal business with the unmatched scalability offered by StoreHippo.

2. Multistore Solution

Implementing q commerce solutions through the hyperlocal commerce route is the cost efficient way to reap the benefits of the disruptive business model., However, to target customers at multiple locations you need to segment your buyers on various factors like location, age group, or buying preference, you are better equipped to offer personalized deals to your customers. As you build an online store for multiple locations in India, you understand the needs of your customers, their buying habits, preferences, etc and it helps you reach a wider market while offering a better and faster delivery solution to your customers. 

StoreHippo ecommerce platform comes with a comprehensive multistore ecommerce solution that helps you set up a chain of location-specific stores in no time. You can add location-specific product catalogues or add best-selling products on each of the sub-stores, enable the price override feature, or design each store differently based on the local audience’s needs. You can build a wide network of storefronts based on different product lines, customer segments, geographies, languages, and any other criteria on your hyperlocal ecommerce brand.  

3. Comprehensive Vendor Management

To establish your quick commerce platform in the Indian ecommerce market, you need multiple vendors and local dealers in multiple locations. It has become quite easy to scale up to new products by sourcing products from far-off locations as well. As you plan to offer a wide range of products to your customers, you need comprehensive vendor management solutions that make it easy for you to manage multiple vendors and their vast catalouges.

StoreHippo's quick commerce platform comes with an advanced multi vendor solution that helps you seamlessly onboard multiple local vendors on your marketplace. With a quick and easy vendor registration process from StoreHippo, your vendors with no prior knowledge of selling online can easily sell their products. The separate vendor dashboard created by the StoreHippo platform helps vendors easily add, delete, edit or manage their products, orders, shipments, etc. You can scale your hyperlocal business to new product verticals by simply adding new product lines.

4. Omnichannel Ecommerce 

90% of the customers look for consistent buyer journeys across multiple channels. As you plan to build a quick commerce marketplace for your brand, do not forget to target your customers on all the channels they visit. Since your customers are present everywhere today, to target the right audience set, you need to take your hyperlocal enterprise ecommerce platform to all the channels loved by your customers. 

StoreHippo offers easy-to-use omnichannel ecommerce solutions for the omnichannel needs of your brand. You can seamlessly add new customer touchpoints using the same backend logic and APIs with StoreHippo. You can create consistent buyer journeys and experiences across all channels and centrally control all these channels on your quick commerce platform. You can also build data-driven strategies for growth by compiling data from all the other sales channels. omnichannel ecommerce solutions from StoreHippo help you experiment with product-market mixes for faster growth and increased customer engagement.   

5. Built-in Mobile App Builder 

Since 80% of online orders come from smartphones, a built-in mobile app builder is a must-have feature in your enterprise ecommerce solutions. Mobile commerce is the roadmap to your business growth and you need to engage with your customers on mobile apps to boost conversions and profits. 

StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce platform is built on a mobile-first technology that comes with a built-in mobile apps builder. You can build Android or iOS mobile apps directly from your admin dashboard at zero additional costs and without any coding required. When you build an online store with StoreHippo, you also create PWA apps that look, feel, and work like mobile apps even on entry-level devices. You can also manage your hyperlocal ecommerce business on the go with a variety of mobile apps for admins, vendors, delivery boys, etc from StoreHippo. 

6. Multilingual Features 

90% of online shoppers said they always visited a website in their language when they had a choice. As you build a hyperlocal marketplace in India, you have customers from multiple locations who speak different languages. With multilingual features on your enterprise ecommerce platform, you can offer a multilingual website for your customers to shop on. You certainly don't want your platform to be restricted by a limited number of languages. 

The SaaS-based ecommerce solution provider StoreHippo comes with a built-in multilingual feature. You can select the language translation feature right from your admin panel. StoreHippo enables you to choose from 100+ languages to translate your content on the website. You can seamlessly translate your website into 100+ languages with StoreHippo’s automatic translation tool. StoreHippo offers both automatic and manual modes of translation for you to choose between the two, you can also override automatic translations selectively on your hyperlocal ecommerce marketplace.     

7. Order and Inventory Management

Managing orders and inventory seems like a never-ending task, especially when you create an online store for your hyperlocal business. With multiple orders coming in and the intense workload of managing all the orders and processing faster deliveries, a smooth management tool becomes a must-have feature. With an automated order and inventory management solution, you have a clear idea of your inventory and stock levels at multiple locations and avoid erroneous orders that result in custom grievances. 

StoreHippo comes with a built-in product-management system that helps your vendors manage their products in the backend and the front end seamlessly. The time-saving features from StoreHippo help your sellers add, delete, edit, import, export, search, publish, or unpublish single or multiple products in just a few clicks. The order management system from StoreHippo helps streamline the order and inventory planning with advanced, automated, and simplified order processing on your quick commerce platform. StoreHippo’s efficient order management system gives great insights into business and enables you to strategically plan your hyperlocal business growth and expansion. 

8. Built-in Marketing Solutions

For a hyperlocal business like yours, you need to adopt location-based marketing that helps you target consumers at a granular, person-level with online or offline messaging based on their physical location. You can easily win your customers when you target them in smaller segments. You can use digital ads for geo-targeting, go for location-based notifications, or tag locations in social media posts to attract local customers on your quick commerce platform.

StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solutions come with built-in marketing tools to help you carve a niche for your brand in the hyperlocal market. The built-in discount engine helps brands offer multi-level discounts for your marketplace. You can send out real-time notifications like email, push, and SMS notifications to inform customers about the offers. With StoreHippo, you can recover abandoned carts and boost your conversions manifold. The built-in SEO tools help you rank higher on SERPs and get organic traffic on your quick commerce marketplace. 

9. Personalisation

Personalisation has come out as a strong ecommerce marketing strategy for brands of every scale and size. The hyper-personalisation age has made brands go miles to create a personalised buyer journey that also helps them target specific audiences and form loyal relationships with the customers. As you build an online store for your hyperlocal business, implementing personalisations becomes the top priority. You can offer a personalised user experience via content, pricing, payment methods, etc. 

StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solutions are built on a decoupled headless architecture that helps brands offer their customers a highly personalised buying journey. You can implement multi-level personalisations on your marketplace, like building multiple storefronts for different locations and customising your shipping solutions to digital payment solutions. You can personalise your website’s layout and create multiple store designs with StoreHippo’s easy drag-and-drop functionality. 

10. Inbuilt Delivery Boy Solution

The core pain of running a successful quick commerce business in India is handling deliveries and making sure your orders reach their destination timely. However, you can onboard multiple local vendors who can ensure on-time delivery with their own delivery agents. Along with the vendors, you can partner with local hyperlocal delivery providers who will then employ agents, local suppliers, stores, etc to fulfill your orders. With timely deliveries, you can not only keep your customers happy but also retain loyal customers to boost your business.

StoreHippo multi vendor solutions help admins onboard multiple vendors with its easy and intuitive vendor platform. Each vendor gets a separate vendor dashboard that helps them manage their business operations seamlessly. StoreHippo also offers built-in delivery boy management solutions to help you manage your fleet of local delivery agents in different locations. StoreHippo also has 30+ pre-integrated logistics partners to help you create a streamlined supply chain. You can integrate with more than one shipping partner on your hyperlocal ecommerce marketplace to optimize the shipping costs and ensure quick deliveries of your orders. 

Conclusion

Quick commerce has changed the ecommerce world for good. With the tremendous scope of growth opportunities the hyperlocal ecommerce business model poses, brands have left no stone unturned to make the most of the booming market. You can power your qcommerce journey and explore new markets, offer seamless and personalized omnichannel buyer journeys, and quickly adapt to changing market trends.  

However, to escalate your business and drive sales, brands need to build a robust quick commerce platform with integrated logistics solutions. StoreHippo helps brands build an online store that offers a set of holistic features like delivery boy apps, vendor dashboards, seller registration forms, automated logistics solutions, multiple shipping partners, etc to help brands kickstart their quick commerce journey. The 360-degree ecommerce solutions help brands create a seamless buying journey for their customers.

Are you all set to build your quick commerce platform in India with StoreHippo solutions? Explore the 300+ enterprise-grade features by starting your 14-day free trial now.