Flipkart has hired Kabeer Biswas, co-founder of Indian delivery startup Dunzo, as the Walmart-owned e-commerce group expands its quick commerce business in the country.
Biswas will lead Flipkart’s rapid commerce effort, called Flipkart Minutes, a source familiar with the matter told britcommerce. The move comes almost a year after Flipkart considered a possible acquisition of Dunzo last year.
The talks collapsed due to complications in the ownership structure of Dunzo, which counts Reliance Retail as one of its biggest backers. Reliance has all but written off Dunzo since then.
The express commerce model in which companies deliver items to customers in 10 to 15 minutes has not worked in most parts of the world, but is increasingly successful in India. A range of retailers and internet companies, from food delivery giant Swiggy to online cosmetics platform Nykaa, are preparing their supply chain ecosystems to enable faster deliveries.
Zomato’s BlinkIt, Swiggy’s Instamart and Zepto currently lead the fast commerce market in India, but that hasn’t deterred big players from joining the race. Flipkart launched Minutes last year and Amazon began piloting its own quick commerce effort last month.
Flipkart is looking to use fast commerce as a way to reach consumers in India’s urban cities, where Amazon has traditionally maintained greater control. Flipkart has already set up more than 100 dark stores (discreet warehouses around residential complexes) and has started offering high-priced electronic items, such as laptops and smartphones, on its quick commerce app, research firm Jefferies wrote in a this month’s report.
Founded in 2014, Dunzo was one of the first startups to explore the rapid commerce model. Backed by companies including Google, Blume Ventures and Lightbox, it had ambitions to transform the country’s e-commerce sector by delivering groceries, household items and more in 30 minutes, and had raised more than $500 million. But the startup failed to make headway as competition intensified.
Biswas has also explored other companies in recent months with his former colleagues, pitching several ideas to VCs such as Peak XV, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.