Quick commerce price war heats up as Amazon, Flipkart enter the fray

With deep-pocketed players entering the quick commerce space, platforms ramp up discounts to attract users, driving up cash burn and delaying paths to profitability

As Amazon and Flipkart enter India’s already saturated quick commerce sector, the competitive stakes are rising. Platforms are resorting to aggressive discounting and absorbing escalating losses, even as the industry grapples with mounting financial strain. Discounts on quick commerce platforms have surged sharply, driven by a price war among a growing number of players, according to a report by The Economic Times. 

Average discounts across product categories have climbed to 20–25 per cent on the maximum retail price (MRP) in June 2025. This is a significant jump from the sub-10 per cent discount levels seen just two years ago, the news report said.

   

More players, higher losses

Apart from established platforms like Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy’s Instamart, newer entrants such as Flipkart Minutes, Amazon Now, and Reliance Retail’s JioMart have entered the market, intensifying the battle for consumer attention. 

Analysts say that among various product categories, personal care items are seeing the steepest discounts — around 35 per cent on MRP. Other items like packaged foods, staples, home care, and beverages are also being heavily discounted. However, categories like dairy see limited markdowns — around 5 per cent — due to their low margins. 

“Prices vary significantly across players in fresh fruits and vegetables too,” noted Jefferies in a report. “However, we do not include it in our basket due to potential variations in product quality.”   

 

Cash burn on the rise

With most companies flush with capital, the focus remains on growth rather than profitability. The monthly cash burn in the quick commerce sector across companies had risen to ₹1,300–1,500 crore — more than double the burn rate from just a few months earlier, the report said. 

For the quarter ended March 31, Blinkit’s parent company Eternal reported a sharp drop in net profit to ₹39 crore, down from ₹175 crore in the same period last year. Rival Swiggy reported a net loss of ₹1,081 crore, nearly double its year-ago figure. Both companies significantly ramped up investments to grow their quick commerce operations. 

The sector’s potential remains strong. Brokerage Morgan Stanley estimates that India’s quick commerce market, currently valued at $8 billion in 2024, could expand to $28 billion by 2026 and reach $57 billion by 2030.

 

Rapid network expansion

Flipkart’s quick commerce arm, Flipkart Minutes, is aggressively expanding its infrastructure, with plans to grow from 400 dark stores to 800 micro-warehouses by the end of 2025 to enable 10-minute deliveries. 

Similarly, Amazon Now has launched services in select Bengaluru pin codes and is planning to scale operations to Mumbai and Delhi-NCR. Early movers such as Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart are also expanding rapidly to maintain their market edge.

Notably, during Eternal’s May earnings call, Blinkit CFO Akshant Goyal said the platform would “prioritise market share gain even at the cost of short-term profitability”. 

 

Bulk discounts to drive larger orders

Platforms like Zepto and Instamart are also pushing bulk-buy programmes — Super Saver and Maxxsaver respectively — to encourage higher basket sizes. These schemes offer deeper discounts to users placing orders above ₹1,000. The strategy not only boosts consumer value but also helps platforms reduce per-order costs through fewer deliveries and lower packaging expenses, while positioning them to compete more directly with value-focused retailers such as Dmart, the news report said.