With beauty & personal care mkt nearing $40Bn, quick commerce emerges as ad battleground

As India’s beauty and personal care market evolves, quick commerce is emerging as a key advertising battleground for brands targeting high-intent consumers. What began as a replenishment channel has evolved into a discovery and conversion engine, prompting higher spends on sponsored listings, search ads and retail media formats.

Platforms such as Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart have expanded their BPC assortments, adding curated storefronts and premium tie-ups that are driving both ad inventory and product discoverability. For brands, visibility on these apps is increasingly akin to winning premium shelf space in modern trade.

This shift is unfolding against a larger market expansion story. According to a recent report by Redseer, India is set to become the world’s fourth-largest beauty and personal care market by 2030, with the category expected to reach nearly USD 40 billion. The report further projects that quick commerce will emerge as the largest online BPC format by the end of the decade, outpacing traditional marketplaces.

As a result, competition for visibility has intensified.

Industry experts said ad costs on quick commerce platforms have surged as competition heats up. Premium inventory, including homepage banners, search sponsorships and category takeovers on Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart, has become prime real estate, driving up CPCs and sponsorship fees, particularly in metros and Tier I markets. They added that some personal care brands are now allocating up to 25% of their digital media budgets to quick commerce.

However, strong repeat behaviour across skincare, hygiene and haircare continues to justify higher acquisition costs. Experts also pointed to collaborative formats such as CPAS on Meta Platforms and Performance Max for Marketplaces via Google, which are helping brands manage blended CPCs by driving targeted traffic to quick commerce product pages while enabling richer creative storytelling beyond in-app placements.

Brand leaders say this is not a tactical pivot, but a structural reallocation.

Manish Chowdhary, Co-Founder, WOW Skin Science said, “Our allocation towards quick commerce has been steadily increasing over the last two years. Today, a meaningful share of our digital spends is directed towards quick commerce ecosystems, especially in metro markets where adoption is strongest.” He added that the brand does not view quick commerce through a fixed percentage lens, instead allocating spends market by market and category by category as consumer behaviour evolves.

According to him, quick commerce began as a convenience-led play focused on availability and speed, but has since evolved into a high-intent channel where immediacy drives decisions. With a narrow decision window, brand trust and visibility become critical. “If retail shelves built brands in the past, digital shelves are doing the same today. The difference is that the shelf refreshes every few minutes,” Chowdhary explained. 

Similarly, Pee Safe said quick commerce has evolved from a tactical, last-mile performance lever into a strategic brand channel for BPC players. With India’s beauty and personal care market projected to near USD 40 billion by 2030, the brand noted that instant delivery has accelerated discovery and impulse buying, prompting higher investments in content, visibility partnerships and platform-led initiatives.

“Although performance marketing remains the cornerstone of our digital investments, our spending on quick commerce platforms has been rising steadily as consumer engagement grows and the platforms advance,” said Karun Arora, Quick Commerce lead, Pee safe. He noted that as quick commerce is expected to dominate online BPC in 2030, we believe that these platforms are not only conversion drivers but also highly effective visibility tools.

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Quick commerce v/s marketplaces and social commerce

Agencies believe this marks one of the most significant shifts in India’s BPC media landscape.

Temujin Mansukhani, Head of Business Development - Business Transformation at Schbang, said quick commerce is delivering strong short-term ROI in everyday personal care categories, driven by high purchase intent and faster conversions. The channel, he noted, is no longer experimental but a defined retail media bucket.

In metro-heavy strategies, brands are allocating higher budgets to Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart, while continuing to use marketplaces for scale and social for brand-building, signalling a rebalancing rather than replacement of channels.

“Marketplaces still win when it comes to assortment and premium discovery. Social commerce plays more of a demand-creation role, building aspiration and driving trials. In many cases, brands are using social to spark interest and quick commerce to close the sale,” Mansukhani noted. 

Raghav Upadhyay, Head of Performance Marketing at Team Pumpkin, added that ROI comparisons depend less on platform and more on media mix design.

He noted that quick commerce platforms deliver strong direct-response ROI in replenishment-heavy categories due to high intent and repeat behaviour, even if in-app CPCs are higher. Integrations such as CPAS on Meta and Performance Max via Google are helping lower blended acquisition costs.

Upadhyay further explained that personal care brands are increasingly carving out a defined share of their digital media budgets, often in the range of 20–25%, for quick commerce platforms. “The reallocation is strategic rather than reactive. High-frequency and replenishment-heavy categories are prioritized on quick commerce due to their alignment with instant-delivery consumption patterns,” he noted, adding that marketplaces continue to attract budgets for scale and long-tail visibility, while social commerce remains key for brand storytelling and discovery. Increasingly, brands are adopting a funnel-led allocation model, with social driving awareness, marketplaces aiding consideration and quick commerce capturing immediate demand, balancing revenue growth with sustained brand building. 

Quick commerce and India’s BPC growth

Looking ahead, industry leaders see quick commerce as central to the next phase of category growth.

Arora said quick commerce is poised to unlock the next phase of BPC growth in India. With e-commerce expected to account for over a third of category spend by 2030, and quick commerce emerging as the most preferred online format, its importance will only rise.

He noted, “The unique strength of the shopping mode, which is able to seamlessly integrate immediacy, discovery, and hyper-locality, makes it highly appealing to the young and digitally native, who are set to fuel nearly half of the category demand.” Arora added that brands must align their portfolios, investments and innovation pipelines with the fast-paced dynamics of quick commerce to fully tap into India’s USD 40 billion BPC opportunity.

Chowdhary added that BPC growth in India will be driven by accessibility, aspiration and speed, with quick commerce aligning with all three. By shrinking the gap between discovery and purchase in an impulse- and replenishment-led category, he said the channel is set to become a core urban growth driver.

“However, long term growth will belong to brands that combine strong product performance with smart distribution. Platforms can accelerate growth. They cannot replace brand equity. For us, quick commerce is part of a larger ecosystem. The goal is not just to be available in ten minutes. The goal is to be chosen in ten seconds,” Chowdhary said. 

Upadhyay said, “Industry observers cautiously agree that quick commerce has the potential to become the largest online channel for transactional beauty and personal care sales by 2030. The growth drivers include increasing urban density, rising consumer preference for convenience, and the inherently high repeat-purchase nature of personal care products.” He added that however, quick commerce’s dominance will likely be measured by transactional volume rather than brand discovery, with marketplaces and social commerce continuing to drive education, engagement and premium positioning. While the future remains multi-channel, quick commerce is best placed to lead on velocity, frequency and impulse-driven consumption in BPC.

Mansukhani agreed that while the projection may appear ambitious, it is not unrealistic for urban India. High-frequency consumption and growing reliance on 10–20 minute delivery give quick commerce a structural edge in replenishment categories. Premium discovery, however, will remain stronger on marketplaces and brand sites, keeping value share more distributed.

“Overall, this feels less like a short-term spike and more like a structural shift in how urban India shops for beauty and personal care,” he concluded.