The 10-minute delivery promise, once the battle cry of quick commerce platforms across India, is being quietly retired. Following Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya's engagement with senior executives from quick commerce and delivery platforms to address gig worker safety and working conditions, the platforms have agreed to drop or phase out explicit delivery deadlines across branding, advertising, and customer interfaces.
Blinkit has already updated its principal tagline from "10,000+ products in 10 minutes" to "30,000+ products delivered at your doorstep". The shift is both regulatory and strategic, nudging the category away from speed theatre toward something more sustainable, both operationally and narratively.
Read e4m deep dive on the 10-minute question
But with the most potent marketing hook now off the table, how do quick commerce platforms continue building desire, trust, and habit in 2026? The answer, according to industry leaders, lies in maturing from adrenaline marketing to infrastructure marketing, where the proposition is less about racing the clock and more about becoming an invisible enabler of daily life.
From speed obsession to system thinking
The removal of the 10-minute promise isn't just a cosmetic change. It represents a fundamental shift in how quick commerce will position itself in the consumer's mental map.
Centre to players on 10-min promise
Pushing for shifting of strategies, Ambika Sharma, Founder and Chief Strategist at Pulp Strategy, says, "When the 10-minute promise fades, quick commerce has to grow up from speed marketing to system marketing," she says. The emphasis, she argues, must shift from how fast platforms arrive to why they deserve a place in daily life. Desire will be built through predictability, assortment intelligence, and quality cues. Trust will come from consistent fulfilment, transparent pricing, and fewer but better moments of engagement. Habit will be driven by utility-led nudges, smart replenishment, and category ownership rather than adrenaline.
As for Yasin Hamidani, Director at Media Care Brand Solutions, an integrated marketing agency working with digital-first brands, the narrative will shift toward reliability over raw speed. "The narrative will move toward ‘always available when you need it’ rather than ‘fastest wins,’" he says. "Brands will build desire through curated assortments, freshness, and local relevance; trust through consistent fulfilment, transparent pricing, and service guarantees; and habit by owning everyday moments: midnight cravings, forgotten groceries, last-minute hosting."
This shift from transactional urgency to emotional reassurance is significant. Quick commerce, which disrupted traditional grocery retail by collapsing delivery timelines, now has to prove its value without leaning on the crutch of a hard deadline. The strongest campaigns, Hamidani suggests, will feel less like tech bragging and more like lifestyle storytelling, positioning quick commerce as an invisible enabler rather than a race against the clock.
No change in business model: Eternal. Read e4m report here
"The winning brands will stop selling urgency and start selling assurance," Sharma added. "Quick commerce will be marketed less like a sprint and more like infrastructure that quietly earns loyalty through reliability, relevance, and everyday usefulness."
Both perspectives point to a common truth: the category must move from performance marketing rooted in speed to brand marketing rooted in dependability. The challenge, of course, is that reliability is harder to dramatize than a ticking clock.
The optics versus the operational reality
It's worth noting that the removal of the 10-minute tagline may be more optics-driven than business-altering. Karan Taurani, Executive Vice President at Elara Capital covering media, retail, and internet sectors, argues that the proposition of quick commerce continues to be anchored in speed, convenience, and proximity-led fulfilment, which remains structurally superior to horizontal e-commerce timelines.
"The '10-minute delivery' claim functioned more as marketing hyperbole rather than a contractual commitment," he says. Actual delivery timelines shown on quick commerce apps are dynamic, driven by dark-store distance, traffic conditions, weather, and real-time rider availability. Platforms have consistently maintained that delivery partners are not mandated to meet fixed timelines, with rider safety and traffic considerations explicitly prioritized.
Taurani believes that competitive intensity remains unchanged and that quick commerce platforms cannot afford complacency. Maintaining superior delivery times is critical to defending share versus traditional e-commerce. However, the absence of a hard benchmark may actually benefit strong operators focused on consistency over marketing claims. "Consumer motivation – immediacy and convenience – does not hinge on a hard '10-minute' promise," he notes.
Awareness has already been built in the metro markets, which contribute the bulk of quick commerce gross merchandise value, and the category is also moving beyond pure grocery and FMCG offerings toward accessories, beauty and personal care, selective apparel, general merchandise, toys, and small household appliances.
The regulatory nudge, then, is less about changing the business model and more about recalibrating the marketing playbook. Quick commerce will still be quick. It just won't be shouting about it in the same way.
Owning moments, not minutes
If speed is no longer the hero, what takes its place? The answer lies in contextualizing quick commerce as a habit, not a hack. Instead of positioning the service as something you use when you're in a bind, the new narrative must frame it as something you rely on routinely. This requires a shift in creative strategy, from high-drama urgency to low-key consistency.
Hamidani's vision of owning everyday moments is instructive here. Midnight cravings, forgotten groceries, and last-minute hosting: these are the micro-occasions where quick commerce has already embedded itself. The task now is to make those moments feel less transactional and more emotional. Campaigns will need to tap into the comfort of knowing that something is always there, rather than the thrill of it arriving in record time. This is a subtler, more sophisticated sell, one that requires deeper consumer insight and more empathetic storytelling.
Sharma's framework of utility-led nudges and smart replenishment points to another layer: the role of product intelligence in driving habit. If platforms can anticipate what you need before you search for it, they move from being a service to being a system. That's where the real stickiness lies. It's not about speed anymore. It's about seamlessness.
Building trust in a post-promise era
Trust has always been a challenge for quick commerce. The category grew so fast that infrastructure, quality control, and customer service often struggled to keep pace. With the 10-minute promise gone, trust becomes even more critical. Transparent pricing, consistent fulfilment, and service guarantees are no longer nice-to-haves; they're the foundation of the new value proposition.
Sharma's emphasis on fewer but better moments of engagement is particularly relevant here. In a post-promise era, every interaction counts. Platforms can't rely on a flashy headline to paper over service gaps. They have to deliver, consistently, on what they say they'll do. That means tighter operations, better communication, and more honest marketing. It also means resisting the temptation to overpromise just to stay competitive.
Hamidani's point about transparent pricing is especially sharp. Quick commerce has occasionally been criticized for dynamic pricing and markup inconsistencies. If the category wants to build long-term trust, pricing clarity will be as important as delivery reliability. Consumers are willing to pay a premium for convenience, but only if they feel they're being treated fairly.
The creative challenge ahead
For creative agencies and brand strategists, the shift from speed to system presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that reliability is inherently less dramatic than urgency. There's no countdown timer, no adrenaline spike, no race against the clock. The opportunity, however, is to build deeper, more emotionally resonant brand worlds that position quick commerce as a life partner, not just a logistics solution.
Expect campaigns in 2026 to lean heavily into storytelling that centres on everyday moments, community, and local relevance. The tonality will shift from high-energy to high-trust. Visuals will move from speed blurs and fast cuts to warm, grounded scenarios that feel relatable and reassuring. The language will become less transactional and more conversational, less about what the platform does and more about what it enables.
Influencer partnerships, micro-content, and user-generated campaigns will likely play a bigger role, as platforms seek to embed themselves into the fabric of daily routines rather than shout from the rooftops. Localization will become critical—not just in terms of inventory, but in terms of messaging. A campaign for Bengaluru will feel different from one for Delhi, because the rhythm of life, the product mix, and the cultural context are different.
Humanizing the hustle
The conversation around quick commerce and delivery timelines has also opened up space for a different kind of brand storytelling: one that puts delivery partners front and centre. In a notable move, Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha recently donned a Blinkit uniform and spent time delivering orders alongside the platform's delivery partners. The gesture, whether viewed as political theatre or genuine solidarity, underscored a shift in how quickly commerce platforms might need to communicate their value in a post-promise era.
By spotlighting the human infrastructure behind the service, such initiatives signal a potential creative direction for the category: campaigns that celebrate the people who make quick commerce possible, rather than just the technology or the speed. This aligns with the broader industry pivot toward trust and reliability. When consumers see the faces behind the app, when they understand the effort involved, the relationship becomes less transactional and more human. It's a softer sell, but in a climate increasingly sensitive to gig worker welfare and operational pressure, it might be the smarter one.
The 10-minute delivery ban, or more accurately, the voluntary retirement of the 10-minute promise, marks a coming-of-age moment for quick commerce in India. The category has proven it can scale. Now it has to prove it can sustain. That requires a different kind of marketing; one that prioritizes depth over decibels, loyalty over virality, and trust over thrill.
As Sharma puts it, the winning brands will stop selling urgency and start selling assurance. That's a harder sell, no question. But it's also a smarter one. Because in the long run, speed is a commodity. Trust is not.