The great Indian Qcomm time con

The new toast - and butter - of town is quick commerce. Qcomm promises delivery in a record-breaking 10 mins. But you know what? And our expert in-house chronometrists have conducted studies on our phone stopwatches, qcomm companies are creatively utilising that age-old nugget: IST, Indian Stretchable Time. IST is no longer about arriving fashionably late, or saying, 'Meet you in an hour', and then turning up in three, with the traffic serving as the temporal equivalent of 'The dog ate my homework' excuse. Now, IST is an avant-garde art form used to dupe consumers into believing that waiting for 30 mins for a bunch of bananas is actually waiting for 10. In other words, since qcomm has said delivery in 10 mins, half an hour is the new 10 mins.

You order toothpaste at 7 a.m., hoping to dazzle the world with your minty-fresh confidence. The app boldly assures you, 'Arriving by 7.10 a.m.' You check at 7.11. 'Your order is on the way.' By 7.30, it's 'almost there'. By 8.00, you've reworked the notion of time that Einstein would find impressive. Qcomm companies are the new Time Lords. They don't just sell groceries but hope - hope that IST will bend time itself. And you know what the genius of Indian qcomm is? It's that slowly but surely, qcomm will be the same as normal ecomm - with just the notion of swiftness attached to it.