Quick commerce is not a grocery channel anymore
Quick commerce began as a grocery convenience play. It is not that anymore. Beauty, supplements, electronics accessories, pet care, gifting and more now move in real volume on the same ten-minute networks, and the assortment keeps widening.
The danger of the not a q-comm product assumption
Every time a brand decides its category is not a quick-commerce category, it hands the shelf to a competitor who decided otherwise. By the time the laggard reconsiders, someone else has the rank, the reviews and the data.
The right question is no longer whether your category sells on quick commerce. It is who is going to define your category there, and whether that is you or the brand one rung above you in the results.
Why the platforms want you off the grocery shelf
This is not an accident of consumer behaviour. The platforms are pulling non-grocery in on purpose, because groceries carry thin single-digit margins and beauty, accessories and gifting do not. Higher-margin baskets are how a ten-minute network stops bleeding. So the merchandising, the home-screen real estate and the ad inventory all tilt toward the categories that used to be considered out of place.
That has a direct cost. Brands have told us they now route 60 to 70 percent of festive marketing budgets to quick commerce, and ad rates jump 40 to 50 percent in peak weeks, per Inc42. If you treat the channel as a grocery afterthought, you are still paying those rates while someone who treats it as primary is compounding rank off them. The economics of who wins are increasingly set after platform fees, not before them, which is why we keep coming back to unit economics after platform fees.
What changed recently
The shift from add-on to engine is now explicit. Analysts expect non-grocery to become the primary driver of GMV growth in 2026, not an incremental line. Counterpoint’s Neil Shah put it plainly to Inc42: non-grocery is no longer just incremental, it is the reason for new orders and higher baskets. Personal care, gifting, small appliances, beauty, medicines and electronics accessories are the categories named.
The platforms are building infrastructure to match. In late 2025 Zepto began piloting Super Mall, a dedicated vertical for high-value and premium non-grocery products spanning home decor, electronics and fashion, alongside an in-app diagnostics service, as reported by Business Standard. Its founder has said publicly he expects the grocery to non-grocery revenue mix to move toward 50-50, carried by beauty, personal care, home appliances, apparel and electronics. A separate Super Mall is not a grocery channel by any reading.
None of this comes free to the brand. As the channel matures, the platforms are raising what they charge to sit on it. Blinkit and Zepto both hiked seller commissions through 2025 to grow revenue under competitive pressure, per Business Standard. So the opportunity and the take-rate are widening together. The brands that win the new categories are the ones that move while the shelf is still being defined, then defend the margin deliberately rather than discovering it is gone.
What to do about it
Stop sorting your catalogue by what feels like a grocery item. Sort it by what a buyer would plausibly want in ten minutes, then test the high-intent, high-margin SKUs first. If the category is being built on these networks right now, the only wrong move is to wait and let the brand above you own the definition. Picking where to plant the flag first is its own decision, which is why we wrote up which platform to launch first.