WPP Media’s Sairam Ranganathan and Karthik Shankar on QCom’s rise and why brands built for speed will win 2026

Quick commerce has compressed what once took hours into a matter of minutes. The gap between craving a chocolate bar at 11 PM and having it delivered to your doorstep has shrunk to roughly 10-11 minutes, a timeframe that includes seeing an ad, clicking through, and placing an order. The shift in consumer behaviour is reshaping how brands plan, invest, and measure their commerce strategies across India.

A new report from WPP Media and Meta reveals that quick commerce now contributes nearly two-thirds of India's online grocery orders, with 45% of festive purchases happening on these platforms. The sector has grown from under Rs. 8,000 crore in FY22 to an estimated Rs. 64,000 crore in FY25, at a 142% compound annual growth rate. More telling is the infrastructure expansion: over 1,200 additional dark stores were added in FY25 alone, with a network of more than 3,000 fulfilment centres across the country.

Non-essential categories lead a new growth wave

The expansion is stretching far beyond essentials. Categories such as fashion accessories and bags have crossed ₹40 crore per month and more than doubled in the past six months. Cookware, lip cosmetics, and even ice cream are among the fastest-growing segments, each recording 14-20% month-on-month growth.

During an interview with Social Samosa,Sairam Ranganathan,Head of Commerce at WPP Media, points to the behavioural shift this enables. "Quick commerce has shortened the journey from craving to consumption to about 10-11 minutes," he explains. “Looking ahead to 2026, this behaviour will expand across many more categories. We’re already seeing high-propensity categories thrive on quick commerce, and that list will only grow. Think fashion, beauty, stationery, even smartphones. While not every category has the same urgency, the number of use cases is increasing. I see no reason why even something like a SIM card couldn’t be delivered in minutes.”

This immediacy is creating new planning imperatives for brands. The report shows that 91% of internet users are now aware of quick commerce services, with more than half having used them within the past week. Accessibility and convenience rank as the top usage drivers, with 50% citing the need for home delivery and 47% requiring urgent product access. The demographic skew is notable: 58% of users are male, 45% belong to Gen Z, and 52% live in Tier-1 cities.

Ranganathan expects that new categories will enter the quick-commerce ecosystem, and new consumer requirements previously tied to traditional or legacy systems will be fulfilled almost instantly in 2026. This is fundamentally changing how brands think about consumer needs and fulfilment speed.

Personalisation at scale becomes non-negotiable

The advertising mechanics are evolving alongside consumer behaviour. Meta's Collaborative Performance Advertising Solution (CPAS) allows brands to run catalogue-powered campaigns that link directly to retailer inventory, pricing, and stock availability. The system tracks the complete journey from impression to purchase, offering product-level reporting and basket insights that were previously unavailable in social advertising.

The report claims that Coca-Cola used CPAS to target sugar-free product buyers through retailer-linked catalogue signals, achieving a 39% improvement in return on ad spend compared to broad-based targeting. The sugar-free retail segment also delivered conversion rates 2.5 times higher and 40% lower acquisition costs. Similarly, Britannia adopted a similar full-funnel strategy across Blinkit, Swiggy, Zepto, and other platforms, reducing cost per purchase by 45% quarter-on-quarter while improving ROAS from 0.6 to 1.0, with select campaigns reaching 5x ROAS.

"Brands do not need to rethink or drastically change what they are doing. They need to add new layers to become more future-ready," says Ranganathan. "One major strategic intervention every brand should focus on is the personalisation journey. Brands that communicate relevant messages to the right consumers have a much higher chance of winning. It is not just about personalisation but personalisation at scale."

This personalisation extends across the entire consumer funnel. Ranganathan breaks down the audience into three distinct groups: those who don't know the brand and don't need it, those who know it but don't need it now, and those who know it and need it immediately. The last group represents the in-market audience ready to convert. For the middle group, brands must create experiences rooted in consumer insight. 

He cites Mondelez's Rakshabandhan campaign as an example, where the brand partnered with filmmaker Zoya Akhtar to let people submit personal stories, which were transformed using AI and shared back in engaging formats.

The largest audience, however, is the one that doesn't need the brand now and isn't aware of it. Ranganathan emphasises that continuous communication becomes important here. “Mapping consumer passions to purchase behaviour through intelligent signals and data exchange is what will help brands grow, both in building brand equity and driving conversions.”

He also stresses the importance of experimentation. "The second shift involves adopting a stronger test-and-learn culture. The cost of experimentation on these platforms is very low, yet many brands still do not fully leverage it," he says. "At WPP Media, we work with brands to create test-and-learn charters and help them build this mindset. It is not a one-off exercise or a campaign-specific approach."

Investment shifts as media and transaction merge

The structural changes are forcing brands to fine-tune their investment strategies. Karthik Shankar, Head of Digital Investments at WPP Media, highlights how the boundaries between different types of touchpoints are dissolving. 

"There are a few important shifts to note. Brands are not only increasing media investments but also rethinking how they plan their supply chain, assortment, and allocation strategies," says Shankar. "These decisions influence how much money needs to be invested across the entire system. The flow now moves from trade to media to everything else, and the traditional silos that once separated these functions are disappearing."

The infrastructure supporting this shift is expanding rapidly. Blinkit operates an estimated 1,750+ dark stores across 172 cities with 17 million monthly transacting users. Swiggy Instamart has 1,000+ stores across 128 cities serving 11.1 million monthly transacting users. Zepto covers 80+ cities with a similar store count. Smaller cities are growing at 8-9% annually, indicating geographic expansion beyond metros. There is a six-to-seven times increase in infrastructure investments in Tier II and Tier III markets.

Quick commerce is also projected to capture 16% of India's e-commerce market by 2027, up from 4% in 2023. Traditional e-commerce platforms are responding by building their own rapid delivery networks. Flipkart launched Minutes in August 2024 and expanded to 19 cities within a year. Amazon introduced 10-minute delivery in Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai through 100+ micro-fulfilment centres, backed by a $233 million investment.

The report highlights lifts in return on ad spend, conversions, and new-to-brand customers when retailer signals are combined with Meta's automation. CPAS campaigns claim an average 24% year-on-year improvement in ROAS, with the platform delivering Rs 3.15 return on ad spend per rupee invested in 2024. Conversion lift studies across 200+ tests in Asia-Pacific showed 19.6% lift in purchases, 10.3% lift in add-to-cart actions, and 4.8% lift in content views compared to baseline.

"We are seeing a clear trend where many media touchpoints are turning into transaction touchpoints, and many transaction touchpoints are becoming media touchpoints," says Shankar. "This mix is now coming together, and the platforms that can orchestrate both effectively will deliver the highest efficiency gains."

Managing this complexity requires orchestration. When a brand is present across five to six platforms with at least ten sub-brands and multiple SKUs under each, the mix of price points, availability, and budget distribution becomes extremely difficult to manage independently. Shankar explains that this is where WPP Media steps in to simplify the complexity and ensure investments are allocated to maximise marginal return on ad spend across platforms rather than spreading efforts too thin.

Bringing discovery and commerce together is being accelerated by AI-driven tools. WPP has developed an operating system called WPP Open, an AI-based workflow that supports the entire journey from brief to delivery. The system captures insights and learnings from every campaign, continuously optimising future work. This allows teams to spend more time interpreting insights rather than gathering information, with AI agents capable of generating charts and analyses instantly.

For festive periods, the playbook recommends an always-on strategy with pre-event buildup and post-event retargeting. This includes using reminder ads, creator partnerships through Meta's partnership ads format, and dynamic catalogue ads that surface the right products at scale. The report shows that quick commerce advertising is projected to exceed Rs 5,000 crore by the end of 2025.

During the report’s launch event, it was mentioned that traditional E-commerce won’t remain the same in 2026 and will continue to evolve since consumer behaviour is shifting. Shankar addresses the relationship between quick commerce and traditional e-commerce, noting that he doesn't see this as a conflict. 

"In many ways, quick-commerce players also want to evolve into fuller e-commerce ecosystems, which is why they are strengthening their supply chains, adjusting their assortment mix, and expanding their network of dark stores," he says.

The next phase of growth will likely see retail infrastructure, media delivery, and consumer experience come together even more closely, and the brands that integrate these elements most effectively will be positioned to capture the expanding opportunity.