Put both eggs in one basket: Why merging Amazon and Tata's quick commerce business is a now or never idea

Homegrown startups Eternal, Swiggy Instamart or Zepto have got India’s urban middle class hooked to their oat milk, apple, sugar, rice, protein bars or even a refrigerator arriving at their doorstep in the blink of an eye. Now, the big boys of global tech-and-retail Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart want to upend that domination by gate-crashing the quick commerce party.

Just recently, Andy Jassy, the Seattle-based CEO of the tech titan flew into India and pledged to build the country’s largest delivery-in-minutes network, Amazon Now. Days earlier, even the Tata Group sought out an Amazon veteran Amit Nanda to take charge of their quick commerce venture Big Basket (BB) and resuscitate its flagging fortunes.

Merging the two operations could be a tantalizing idea. Together, both the laggard and the late entrant – BB and Amazon -- can accelerate growth and improve relevance, reach and range. Such a combination may help them survive the hypercompetition among half a dozen plus rivals that has made the sector a Pyrrhic land grab with each passing order. Swiggy and Eternal have together lost around $13 billion in market value since their all-time highs of last September /October as deeper-pocketed newbies like Flipkart Minutes, Amazon Now or even Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail have been cranking up the heat.


To win the 10-minute dash for deliveries, every player is bulking up distribution to fight for the same customer in the same area. But the escalating cash burn is burning a big hole in everyone’s balance sheet. Collectively, the companies are losing Rs 50 crore/day. That’s around Rs 20,000 crore (~$2.1 bn) annualized. Eternal’s QC arm, Blinkit, also the biggest among all, is the only company that has proven the business hypothesis can be profitable on its own. That success has spawned investor frenzy but recently even the company’s boss publicly warned that the country’s $14 billion rapid commerce segment is hurtling toward a shake-out. IPO-bound Zepto alone has spent $1.2 billion to build a network in the last 3 years but is still in the red.

Amazon was forever unconvinced that a standalone quick commerce platform would ever make money just by delivering groceries. But once local rivals like Blinkit blitzed their way in by expanding their product portfolio to include apparel, electronics, and beauty, they not only started looking like an Amazon but were also gnawing away at the non-grocery wallet of Amazon’s prime customers. Industry executives say, 70% of Blinkit’s app users have an Amazon app, underscoring a massive overlap of user profiles. Superfast doorstep deliveries have moved far ahead of being an adjunct to regular internet commerce. They are replacing large parts of it. Even Walmart woke up before Amazon. In the last one year, Flipkart Minutes has scaled faster with 1000 dark stores, double that of Amazon.

Jassy’s snazzy sound-bytes during his June trip to India, his first since taking over in 2021, prove the colossus is finally shrugging off its inertia and girding for battle. But it may want to press the accelerator for a mega expansion of its own super-fast delivery network, competition is hardly slowing down.

Blinkit’s dark store footprint is 4.5x that of Amazon. Even Zepto is almost more than double its size. The net order value (NOV) --- a barometer on how much customers spend on a platform – is higher on Blinkit (~15x) and Zepto (~7 times) than Amazon, as per 4Q26 data. If it wants to service 300 plus Indian cities and towns from the current 15, it needs to push the pedal fast. Buying then becomes a shortcut to scale rather than building.

Enter India’s largest business conglomerate: Tatas.

With each passing minute, BB is losing its right to win. It has forever been plagued by management churns, business pivots and inadequate capital. It is fifth among seven players in total orders serviced, even though the early mover advantage still ensures its order quality (average spend/order) remains higher than its MNC rivals Flipkart and Amazon.

Its revenues have stayed constant over the last 3 years while the market grew nearly four times which consequently has led to its market share plunging to 8% in CY26 from 40% in 2022. Tata’s billion-dollar acquisition in 2021 has not stemmed losses – Rs 13,000 crore since inception -- and it has Rs 7000 crores of debt. Housed under the 7-year old, loss-making Tata Digital, a motley collection of disparate internet businesses, BB has never managed to claim the management focus from parent Tata Sons that it required for its success. BB needs constant fund infusion for at least the next 5 years but with several cash guzzlers – aviation, semiconductors, electronics – which serve strategic national interests, a less distracted sponsor is essential to bankroll future investments and losses.

For Amazon’s global balance sheet, such sums will be a rounding error. It is investing $13 billion more in India alone to build its AI, cloud and retail empire. In Germany, Japan and many other markets, it has put serious money to work in the past, absorbed early losses but built scale by overcoming local players or socio-political pushbacks. And now, if it is serious about exporting QC knowhow from here to frontier markets in Latin America, UAE, Mexico and even the US and UK, then it is best to learn from a survivor.

Together Amazon-BB can leapfrog competition. A transaction today makes them an immediate 2nd in dark store footprint with 1400-1500 stores. But bulking up the back end is half the battle. It’s equally important to utilise that network efficiently by boosting the net order value. Even on that metric, it will inch closer to the 3rd largest player, Instamart, based on BB’s customer profile and capabilities. For now, Instamart is sitting out the ongoing war for wallet share as its parent Swiggy is prioritising profitability. That makes this the right moment to strike.

Being predominantly a grocery focussed chain, BB’s margins will continue to be low single digits. But for someone like Amazon it becomes a perfect fitment. Staples and fresh food have never been its core strength while BB is still best in class with strong sourcing, grading and packing supply chains in place.

More importantly, the longer Blinkit maintains its leadership, it can mine a higher volume of customer data of high frequency purchases from micro markets, which in turn helps in building better advertising solutions -- a key income source for these platforms. Together Amazon and BB can hammer through improved efficiencies and monetise better. Here BB’s assiduously built tech stack will also come handy. Though counterintuitive, an India-specific QC tech backbone has not been Amazon’s strongest suite. It still relies on a patchwork of vendors.

The synergies are many. It will all boil down to valuations and deal maths. But the key shareholders would do well to remember pride has no place in profit and loss accounts. With Tata Son’s largest shareholders closely scrutinising the red ink across the group’s many new ventures, now may be the time to put profit ahead of pride. There’s also the danger that Reliance Retail ahead of its IPO might make its own M&A move in QC sphere to catch up.

Like in Akira Kurosawa’s cinematic masterpiece, the battle will one day end but not before four of the seven samurais are dead. It’s up to each player to decide their fate.