The Quick Commerce Basket Ceiling

Kotak's basket model suggests quick commerce platforms have more to gain from negotiating harder with suppliers than from nudging customers to add items.

Kotak modeled 20,000 quick commerce order baskets and found that more than half are priced below INR 500, a fat left tail driven by the fact that urban household spending puts a hard cap on how much quick commerce can expand. Only 52% of the consumption basket is addressable by quick commerce at all, the bank concluded.

The model’s central finding is that basket value is more sensitive to supplier pricing — specifically discounts to MRP — than to the number of items per order. Hence, the path to better unit economics runs through harder supplier negotiations rather than nudging customers to buy more.