I build and run online grocery fulfilment networks — and I think the industry has been solving the wrong problem.
15 years in operations · Dubai · ex-noon · ex-Swiggy · started at bigbasket · MBA, IIM Kozhikode
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Quick commerce is not a delivery problem. It is a network-design problem wearing a delivery costume.
The industry spent a decade proving that customers want groceries in twenty minutes. That question is settled. What remains unsettled — and what most balance sheets discovered the hard way — is whether anyone can serve that demand without setting fire to capital.
My work sits where network design meets daily execution: which assets fulfil which catchments, how assortment is cut, how pick paths and rider utilisation are modelled, and whether a promise window survives contact with a Thursday evening. I have built fulfilment networks from nothing and inherited networks that needed rescuing, across more than one country and more than one regulatory reality.
An existing store has paid its rent, turned its inventory and chosen its catchment years before you arrive. Teaching it to fulfil online is almost always cheaper than building a second box across the street.
Cost per order is not an outcome, it is a design parameter — decided by network shape, assortment discipline and utilisation modelling long before it shows up in a P&L.
Running own-brand rapid delivery, a scheduled online supermarket and third-party marketplace partners from one estate means competing promise windows on shared inventory. That is where operating models break.
Labour cost, working-time rules and urban density differ enormously by market. The method transfers between countries. The numbers never do — and treating them as if they do is how good operators get things wrong abroad.
Fifteen years across online grocery, quick commerce and e-commerce fulfilment in the Middle East and India.
From people who managed me and worked alongside me.
“Dipankar was part of my team in a very innovation focused role. He was one of the best colleagues I had a chance to work with. He displayed solid aptitude in innovation, creativity, problem solving, solution mindset, program and project management. Some of the work he did on the financial services ecosystem for gig workers on the platform was instrumental and seminal for multiple workstreams built on it later.”
“Dipankar worked with us running operations for the Eatfresh brand. He is a good people manager, with a get-things-done approach to work. He performed well both in the high flux ramp-up stage and subsequently in the high velocity expansion phase of the business, and will be a good asset in any business setup.”
Writing on store-based quick commerce, dark-store economics, and what actually makes twenty-minute grocery work.
What it is, how it differs from a dark store, how the cost structure actually decomposes, and a three-question test for choosing between the two. The reference page on the model I have spent the last several years running.
Fourteen billion dollars went into dark-store startups, and the best operator in the category still loses money per order. The product was never the problem — the lease was. A three-question test for when a dark store is the right tool, and when it is a subsidy to your landlord.
Open to conversations about Head of, Director and Senior Manager roles in fulfilment and quick commerce across the UAE — and always happy to trade notes with operators building in this space.
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