With Valentine’s Day around the corner, quick commerce companies bet big on gifting

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and the gifting industry is busy preparing for its biggest day of the year. This year, though, it isn’t traditional players such as New Delhi-headquartered FNP (formerly Ferns n Petals) or Mumbai-based IGP that are making the most noise. Instead, it is e-commerce companies, especially the quick-commerce ones, that appear to be in overdrive, selling flowers, cakes, and other gift hampers in the fortnight leading up to Valentine’s Day.

Indeed, on February 7, Blinkit founder and CEO Albinder Dhindsa tweeted about how the company, which has featured Valentine’s Day gifting prominently on its app, was seeing record sales of both chocolates and roses. According to multiple people aware of the matter, Blinkit’s ambitions in the gifting space go much further. The Zomato-owned company is doubling down on the gifting and celebration category this year with private labels. According to two sources aware of the matter, the company held talks with multiple prominent cloud kitchen operators to procure fresh cakes from them, with some already available on its platform.

“They will buy the products and it will be sold as a co-branded offering with Blinkit,” said one of the people mentioned above. This marks the first instance of an Indian quick commerce company selling fresh cakes, though they have offered a limited selection of flowers for a while now. This year, Walmart’s Flipkart has also started flower delivery, launching a 3-hour fresh flower delivery service across 450 pincodes.