Diwali is over, now comes the real quick-commerce test

The Diwali shopping rush may be over, but for brands that turned to quick-commerce platforms to capture festive demand, the more important business question is only beginning to emerge: did the additional spending translate into incremental growth, or did brands simply pay more to remain visible?

With consumers increasingly relying on quick-commerce platforms for last-minute purchases, personal grooming, gifting and festive essentials, the category has become an important part of the festive marketing mix. For brands across beauty, personal care, food and wellness, the platforms offer an opportunity to reach consumers closer to the point of purchase, particularly when purchase decisions are driven by immediacy and convenience.

However, the growing competition for digital shelf space is also changing the economics of participation. Sponsored listings, preferred placements and platform-led promotions are becoming increasingly important for discoverability, while the cost of securing visibility is rising in several festive-heavy categories.

Pratik Agrawal, Head E-com & D2C at Zydus Wellness, pointed to a sharp increase in advertising costs during the festive period, particularly in categories such as gifting, chocolates and beauty, where brands witnessed a surge in CPC and CPM rates during Diwali. “The premium is as high as 30- 35% than usual. We generally plan our budgets accordingly as this is now a yearly phenomenon.

“Also, we are being choiceful in ensuring to spend on select platforms rather than broad-basing our spends," he added. 

For brands, however, the response is not necessarily to increase spending across every available platform. Agrawal's comments indicate a more selective approach to festive investments, with brands accounting for the seasonal cost escalation while prioritising platforms where they see greater business potential.

This also raises a larger question about whether visibility on quick-commerce platforms is becoming a necessary cost of competing during high-demand periods, rather than an investment that can automatically be expected to deliver proportionate sales growth.

Garima Bansal, CMO at Recode Studios, believes that while visibility is important during the festive period, the focus cannot simply be on increasing advertising budgets. Brands need to assess whether the additional investments are generating meaningful returns. "Before brands decide to make bigger budgets, they need to assess their ROI for the spend as well as their conversion and repeat purchase ratios. Offerings and discounts during festivals can aid in boosting sales volumes, but at the same time, too much discounting also affects profitability and brand image."

Aniket Aggarwal, Deputy Manager, Ecom at Maliao Cosmetics, believes that quick commerce is bringing brands closer to consumers at a relevant point in the shopping journey, but the increasing competition is also raising the cost of securing that attention.

"Sponsored Listings, Preferred Placements, and Platform Marketing are becoming essential techniques in the process of enhancing product discoverability. With rising competition, companies may be required to dedicate a greater portion of their digital marketing budget toward retail media. Yet, increased advertising spend does not guarantee corresponding growth in sales. Increased costs related to placement, commissions, and marketing will likely drive up customer acquisition and margin costs."

Aggarwal's point also highlighted the need for brands to be selective about the products they promote, rather than participating in every promotional opportunity available on the platforms.

"The important thing here is for businesses to be very aware of the payback that would come from their investment while advertising through quick-commerce. The best way for brands to do this is by not participating in all the promotion activities but rather by choosing goods with high demand."

The incrementality question

Beyond the rising cost of visibility, another issue confronting brands is how to establish whether quick-commerce campaigns are generating genuinely incremental sales.

An increase in orders on a quick-commerce platform may appear to indicate business growth. However, it does not necessarily mean that the brand has acquired new consumers or expanded its overall sales. Some of the demand could simply have moved from general trade, brick-and-mortar stores, marketplaces or brand-owned websites to quick commerce.

This makes the measurement of festive campaigns more complicated, particularly when brands are evaluating the performance of individual platforms against their wider business.

Aggarwal highlighted the distinction between platform-level growth and actual incremental business. "An increase in orders on a quick-commerce site does not always imply that there has been an acquisition of new customers for the brand. This could simply be because the customers have moved from brick-and-mortar stores or even from other e-commerce sites. It is important to compare sales figures across channels in both campaign and non-campaign times to determine the actual growth of the brand."

For brands, this means that campaign performance cannot be evaluated through order generation alone. First-time purchases, repeat buying, average basket size and changes in demand across channels become important indicators of whether quick commerce is expanding the consumer base or merely redistributing existing sales.

At Zydus Wellness, Agrawal pointed to market share movement and category growth as indicators of incrementality. "We look at our market share movement in any category and if we are able to deliver higher market share on the back of campaigns it generally indicates a higher incremental business if it’s over the share of what we have on regular days. Also if we are able to demonstrate faster growth than the category that’s another indicator for incremental growth on the back of the campaign."

The approach places greater emphasis on performance relative to regular business trends, rather than treating a festive spike in orders as an automatic indicator of additional demand.

Karan Korke, Co-Founder and CMO of The Healthy Binge, similarly believes that brands need to look beyond impressions, clicks and gross order volumes when assessing the effectiveness of their quick-commerce investments. "We look at quick commerce as an important growth engine, but we believe festive investments need to be evaluated beyond impressions, clicks or gross order volumes. The more meaningful indicators are new-to-brand customers, repeat behaviour after the campaign, changes in order volumes against a comparable baseline, and the overall contribution after accounting for advertising and promotional costs."

Korke also drew attention to inventory availability, an aspect that can directly affect the returns on festive advertising investments. With brands paying for sponsored visibility and promotional placements, product availability becomes equally important in ensuring that consumer interest translates into actual purchases. "Inventory availability is equally important. There is little value in paying for visibility if the product is unavailable when demand peaks."

His observation added another dimension to the economics of quick commerce. Advertising investments may help brands capture consumer attention, but stock availability and fulfilment remain critical to converting that attention into sales.

The platform dependency problem
While quick commerce offers brands access to consumers at the point of purchase, the relationship is largely mediated by the platform. This creates another strategic consideration for marketers: how much control do brands actually retain over the consumer relationship?

Unlike brand-owned websites, where companies have greater control over customer engagement and data, quick-commerce platforms largely manage the transaction interface and shopping experience. Brands may be able to influence product discovery through advertising, descriptions, pricing and promotions, but their access to customer-level information and direct engagement remains limited.

Aggarwal highlighted this distinction. "The quick commerce platforms allow the brands access to the consumer at a very relevant point in the shopping journey, although the control that is exercised over the entire shopping experience by the brand is still restricted. The platforms normally own the transaction process, the interface with the consumer, and much of the transaction data. What the brands do have control over is the discovery process of the product through advertising, product descriptions, pricing, packaging, and promotions."

For brands, this means that acquiring a consumer through quick commerce does not automatically translate into ownership of that consumer relationship. The challenge is to ensure that the first purchase leads to further engagement with the brand, rather than remaining confined to the platform where the transaction originated.

Bansal believes that the growing dependence on quick-commerce platforms makes it important for brands to examine consumer behaviour beyond the immediate purchase. "With quick commerce apps, there has been a change in how consumers are acquiring beauty products, especially during peak demand periods, such as Diwali. Quick commerce apps allow companies to reach consumers who need more convenience in delivery, immediate delivery of beauty products, and other such factors. But at the same time, consumers on quick commerce apps are mostly dependent on the app itself, not the company."

She believes brands must assess whether the consumers acquired through these platforms continue interacting with them across other channels. "Another critical measure would be whether the new customers interact with the brand further."

Korke echoes the concern, pointing out that the consumer relationship on quick commerce is inherently platform-led. "The consumer relationship on quick commerce is inherently more platform-led. Brands have limited access to customer-level data and cannot always build the same direct engagement that they can through their own channels. This makes it important to use a combination of platform-level campaign reporting and our own sales data to assess incrementality."

For marketers, the larger task is to integrate quick commerce into their broader omnichannel strategies instead of viewing it as an isolated sales channel. As Korke puts it, "Ultimately, the objective should not be to win the digital shelf at any cost, but to build sustainable demand while keeping customer acquisition economics and margins in view."

With more than 90% of the festive season now behind them, brands will be looking to assess whether their quick-commerce investments translated into new consumers, repeat purchases and meaningful gains in market share. The real test of the channel will lie not just in the order volumes generated during Diwali, but in how much of that demand sustains beyond the festive rush. As brands begin evaluating their festive performance, e4m will revisit these conversations to understand the business numbers behind the quick-commerce push, including the sales growth, customer acquisition and returns brands have recorded from the channel.