While the top three platforms continue to scale at roughly around 75 per cent YoY GMV growth, challenger platforms are growing four times faster
Quick commerce gross merchandise value (GMV) reached around Rs 11,000 crore, growing around 100 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in January 2026. Order volumes climbed around 95 per cent YoY to nearly 7.8 million orders per day, a report showed.
Sequentially, volumes were still up around 7 per cent month-on-month (MoM) and the republic day week marked the month’s peak, with OPD touching around 8.3 million. Redseer strategy consultants stated that the start of a new year is usually when demand cools, excess capacity shows up and reality sets in. January 2026, however, is telling a different story for quick commerce.
Rather than resetting to pre-festive levels, the category has held on to OND-scale demand more strongly than in previous years, signalling that what looked seasonal is increasingly structural, the report added.
Average order value (AOV) (post MRP discounts and excluding delivery fees) remained flat MoM, but still grew 5 per cent YoY to around Rs 460, holding up despite expansion into smaller cities where baskets are typically lighter. Meanwhile, Monthly Transacting Users (MTUs) expanded around 95 per cent YoY to around 5.2 crore, reinforcing that growth is being driven by more users and more missions, not just higher spend from the same cohort.
Growth No Longer Just About Grocery
The clearest shift in January shows up in the category mix. Non-grocery grew around 1.6 times faster than grocery, reinforcing that quick commerce growth is now being driven by use-case expansion, not incremental grocery frequency alone.
Within non-grocery, fashion (+340 per cent) and mobiles (+245 per cent) are scaling rapidly from a low base. Beauty and personal care (BPC) (+140 per cent), BGM (+200 per cent) and baby care (+160 per cent) are adding meaningful depth. Home and furniture (+90 per cent) and epharma (+115 per cent) are growing steadily.
“As non-grocery expands, demand is also shifting toward larger basket sizes. Higher AOV buckets are scaling faster, reflecting a gradual but important change in how consumers are using quick commerce,” the report added.
Competition Is Stirring, But Leadership Holds
The report mentioned that January also points to early signs of competitive disruption. While the top three platforms continue to scale at roughly around 75 per cent YoY GMV growth, challenger platforms are growing four times faster, leading to visible share movement at the margin.
“Leadership remains intact for now, but the market is no longer static. Execution gaps are widening, with leaders converting scale into productivity more consistently than the rest,” Redseer pointed out in the report.
Leading platforms have improved OPD per dark store by around 13 per cent YoY to around 1,350, even as they expand into smaller cities where baseline efficiency is lower. Strong growth in the top-eight cities has more than offset this dilution.
“Challenger platforms, meanwhile, are operating at roughly half the efficiency of the top three, though some micro-markets are already hitting over 1,000 OPD per dark store. Most of their growth is coming from existing users, with efficiency expected to improve as recall and density build,” the report mentioned.
The report added that as the current year progresses, city-level maturity and execution discipline will increasingly determine profitability at the dark store level.
