Vaeshnavi Kasthuril, MINT

Mumbai, 6 May 2026

Fashion retailers are speeding up deliveries to keep pace with instant-gratification shopping driven by quick-fashion startups, with established players and newer brands taking sharply different approaches.

For example, brands such as Biba and The House of Rare have adopted a more calibrated, infrastructure-led strategy rather than a rapid overhaul of existing store networks. “We’ve been doing this in a very soft way but not necessarily from the same stores because that affects the customer experience,” said Siddharth Bindra, managing director of Biba. Bindra said using retail stores as fulfilment hubs for rapid delivery creates operational constraints, particularly given store sizes and layouts. “We don’t have very large stores; they are anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 square feet. So that’s not the right efficiency,” he said.

Instead, the brand is evaluating a hub-based model in cities with higher store density, enabling faster deliveries without disrupting stone operations. “If we do, it will be though proper hubs in cities where we have four to five stores, where we would start with quick commerce and accelerate it,” he said. This could enable same-day or two to three-hour deliveries.

The House of Rare, which houses Rare Rabbit (men’s urban fashion) and Rareism (women’s fashion), is adopting a similar approach, evaluating city-levee fulfilment hubs in markets with higher store concentrations to enable faster deliveries while keeping retail outlets focused on walk-in consumers.

The strategy reflects a broader attempt among legacy retallers to belance speed with experience, rather than treating stores as Interchangeable logistics nodes. “The eventual goal is the customer, but it creates a lot of difference in the customer experience” Bindra said, pointing to the trade-offs involved.

Different take

In contrast, some brands are moving more aggressively to integrate stones directly into fulfilment networks.

Libas, an initial public offering (IPO)-bound apparel company, is networking its operating model to plug its physical retail network Into a faster, hyperlocal delivery system.

Earlier, the 12-year-old company followed a more traditional structure. Online orders were largely fulfilled from central warehouses and delivered over a few days, while stores primarily served walk-in customers, with the two channels operating independently.

That is now changing. Libas is using its stores and nearby warehouses as local fulfilment points, allowing it to service orders within a much smaller delivery radius,

“At Libas, the time frame will be approximately 60-90 minutes at the max,” said Bhavay Pruthi, senior vice president, e-commerce and product management.

The rollout has been gradual, starting with select cities and limited catchments, typically within a 7-10km radius, where delivery timelines can be tightly controlled. It has also narrowed the product mix initialy to itams that are easier to move quickly.

The push comes as consumer expectations around delivery timelines extend beyond groceries into fashion, forcing brands to rethink supply-chain design,

Rise of quick fashion

The urgency to adapt is being shaped by a surge in quick fashion startups that are attracting investor attention despite heavy cash burm.

The segment has seen a flurry of funding in recent months, with Zilo raising $15.3 million in February led by Peak XV, and Knot securing $5 million in a round led by 12 Flags in December.

It has also evolved rapidly. Quick-commerce platforms such as Zepto, Instamart and Blinkit initially offered a limited range of basic fashion items for last-minute purchases. This has since expanded into a more specialized category, with vertical players offering wider assortments across party, work and occasion wear with rapid delivery timelines.

New entrants are pushing the model further. Wydo, for instance, promises deliveries within 15 to 30 minutes in Bengaluru, while Gen Z-focused offerings such as Newme’s Zip and Snitch Quick are building businesses around near-instant fashion access.

Myntra’s rapid commerce division, M-Now, accounted for about 10% of orders in the locations where it was available as of last November.

“This is the new kind of experience that customers are expecting,” Pruthi said.

Libas is working with third-party logistics providers and quick commerce platforms for the last-mile delivery, while focusing internally on faster picking, packing and order routing. Quick commerce currently accounts for about 2% of its overall sales, with scope to grow as the model scales..

Early results, however, highlight the trade-offs. “We saw very good sell-throughs for e-commerce, but it was cannibalizing existing store sales,” Pruths said.

There are also fimits to what customers are willing to buy through rapid-delivery channels. “Customers do not have the confidence to spend 15,000 for a fashion product from a quick- commerce channel,” he said.

To address this, Libas has tightened delivery radii, curated a more suitable product mix, and is testing stores with attached dark-store infrastructure to balance walk-in and online demand.

Experts say these challenges are structural.

“If you look at fashion, it’s extremely unpredictable, and if you are a brand across multiple products, it’s complicated process,” said Devangshu Dutta, founder of management consulting firm Third Eyesight.

While demand for faster deliveries is rising, it remains a small slice of the overall market, with profitability still uncertain due to limited assortments and high fulfilment costs. For traditional retailers, adopting the model requires a fundamental reworking of supply chains that were not built for near-instant delivery, Dutta added.

(Published in MINT)

Shabori Das, ET Bureau
Dec 10, 2025

India’s social media platforms are powerful marketing tools but not yet retail destinations. Billions scroll and swipe daily, but few buy directly within apps. Unlike China, India faces regulatory hurdles and a lack of integrated payment systems.

A billion Indians scroll, swipe and double tap every day, but barely buy. Despite Instagram and Facebook Marketplace being in India for over a decade, social media here remains a showroom, not a store. Creators and D2C brands are hustling to convert attention into action, but the holy grail of in-app shopping where discovery, live streaming, and purchase happen seamlessly, remains out of reach.

The question is, what’s stopping India from becoming the next China or the US in social commerce?

Influence-to-Commerce Gap

Globally, social commerce is powered by influencers. In China, influencer Li Jiaqi reportedly sold products worth $2 billion on Singles’ Day on Alibaba’s online marketplace Taobao Live in 2021. Another popular influencer Zheng Xiang Xiang, with over 5 million followers on Douyin (the Chinese equivalent of TikTok), reportedly generated $18 million in sales in a week in 2023. These are numbers India’s creator economy can only dream of, for now.

To be clear, influencer marketing in India is booming. EY estimates the sector at over Rs 3,000 crore and yet, due to regulatory restrictions, social media platforms in India can’t host end-to-end transactions. What India has is content commerce, driven by players like Meesho and Myntra, not social commerce. Globally, social commerce is a $1-trillion market. China alone accounts for over $500 billion and the US, $100 billion. India’s share? Around $10 billion — despite being home to the world’s largest Gen Z population and the second-largest base of internet users after China.

What’s Holding India Back

“Just as quick commerce changed how India buys food, social commerce will change how we shop for fashion and lifestyle,” says Anand Ramanathan, partner, consumer industry leader, Deloitte South Asia.

The idea is simple: Social commerce enables an end-to-end purchase journey within a social media app. But in India, the final sale still happens elsewhere — typically on e-commerce platforms.

“In China, live streaming contributes nearly 20% of total e-commerce revenue. In India, it hasn’t taken off,” says Puneet Sehgal, CEO of D2C apparel brand Freakins. He believes in-app checkout could be transformative. “Our Gen Z audience spends over an hour daily on social media. If the purchase could happen right there, it’s one step less for the consumer — and one step closer to a sale.”

The China Contrast

China’s social commerce revolution was built on three forces — speed, scale and seamlessness. Influencer Zheng, for instance, showcases each product for barely three seconds and moves on. That brevity, combined with integrated payments, drives impulse buying at staggering volumes.

India’s influencer-driven commerce, by contrast, is still warming up. Projected to touch $ 55 billion by 2030, it remains largely limited to discovery and advertising.

The barriers aren’t technological, they’re regulatory. India’s payment rules require clear accountability and settlement tracking, making it difficult for global platforms to enable in-app sales. Meta’s 2023 policy shift also directed purchases off-platform, keeping Instagram and Facebook Marketplace confined to discovery and promotion, rather than purchase. For now, social media in India remains a potent marketing engine, not yet a retail destination.

Experiments and Exceptions

Some Indian players are testing new waters. Myntra’s Glamstream, launched this July, lets influencers host live sessions where viewers can “shop the look” in real time — though the final checkout still redirects you to the Myntra app.

“India’s creator economy influences over $300 billion in annual consumer spending,” says Sunder Balasubramanian, chief marketing officer at Myntra.“That could grow to $1 trillion in the next few years, making India one of the fastest-growing creator economies globally,” adds Lakshminarayan Swaminathan, vice president-product management, Myntra.

The potential is clear. In 2021, Taobao Live hosted a 12-hour live streamed sale with influencer Li Jiaqi in China that clocked $2 billion in presales and attracted 250 million viewers.

Closer home, Sujata Biswas, co-founder of Suta Sarees, recalls Instagram’s shortlived Shop Now feature. “We saw an immediate dip in transactions after it was withdrawn,” she says. “Fashion is about instant gratification. You see it, you want it and buy it right away.”

The D2C Advantage

India’s D2C market, valued at $87 billion as of 2025 by Deloitte, could be the biggest gainer if social commerce does take off. Most D2C brands currently pay 25–35% retailer margins to platforms like Myntra and Nykaa. Social commerce could let them bypass intermediaries and sell directly to their audiences.

“Anything that reduces friction between intent and purchase is gold,” says Sehgal. “If that entire journey — from watching to buying — happens within the same app, conversion rates would shoot up.”

Even so, social platforms come with their own costs. TikTok, for instance, charges promotional, marketplace and fulfilment fees. But for Indian D2C players, the larger hurdle isn’t cost — it’s access.

Open vs Closed Ecosystems

“India’s retail market is far more open than China’s,” explains Devangshu Dutta, CEO of ThirdEyesight, a retail consulting firm. “In China, closed ecosystems like WeChat and Douyin created the perfect environment for social commerce to thrive. In India, where consumers can freely move between Google, Meta and e-commerce giants, those closed loops don’t exist.”

Globally, TikTok Shop, Douyin, WeChat, Pinduoduo, and Taobao Live dominate social commerce. According to Business of Apps, a data provider for the global app industry, TikTok earned $23 billion in 2024, with nearly 23% of it from in-app and commerce purchases.

If similar models are launched in India, e-commerce giants would face direct competition from the very platforms that fuel their traffic.

The Wait Continues

From beauty tutorials to thrift stores, social media spawns thriving micro economies. Yet, true social commerce — where discovery leads directly to purchase — hasn’t yet clicked.

The next big leap for India’s e-commerce may not come from deeper discounts or faster delivery but from social media itself. “The idea of instant gratification is key,” says Biswas. “When the ‘Shop Now’ button comes back, we’ll be the first to use it.”

Till then, India scrolls, likes, shares — and waits.

(Published in Economic Times)