Flipkart hires Dunzo’s co-founder to lead quick commerce push

Flipkart has hired Kabeer Biswas, the 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 quick commerce effort, called Flipkart Minutes, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The move comes nearly a year after Flipkart was considering a potential acquisition of Dunzo last year.

The talks fell due to complications in the ownership structure of Dunzo, which counts Reliance Retail as one of its largest backers. Reliance has all but written off Dunzo since then.

The quick-commerce model where companies deliver items to customers within 10 to 15 minutes hasn’t worked in most parts of the world, but it’s increasingly finding success in India. A range of retailers and internet firms, from food delivery giant Swiggy to online cosmetics platform Nykaa, are gearing up their supply chain ecosystems to accommodate for faster deliveries.

Zomato’s BlinkIt, Swiggy’s Instamart and Zepto currently lead the quick-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 quick commerce as an avenue to tap consumers in urban Indian cities, where Amazon has traditionally maintained a stronger grip. Flipkart has already established more than 100 dark stores — discrete warehouses around residential complexes — and has begun offering high-priced electronic items like laptops and smartphones on its quick-commerce app, research firm Jefferies wrote in a report this month.

Founded in 2014, Dunzo was one of the earliest startups to explore the quick commerce model. Backed by the likes of Google, Blume Ventures and Lightbox, it had ambitions to upend the country’s e-commerce sector by delivering groceries, household goods and more within 30 minutes, and had raised more than $500 million. But the startup failed to make inroads as the competition intensified.

Biswas has also explored other ventures in recent months with his former colleagues, pitching various ideas to VCs like Peak XV, according to people with knowledge of the talks.