For some iPhone patrons in India, getting Apple’s brand-new iPhone 18 Professional or iPhone 18 Professional Max didn’t require lining up exterior a retailer or ready days for supply. They wanted only some faucets on a quick-commerce app to get one delivered to their doorstep in about 10 minutes.
Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy’s Instamart, and BigBasket — platforms greatest recognized in India for delivering groceries and on a regular basis necessities in minutes — started providing the brand new Professional fashions as they went on sale within the nation on Friday. The telephones are, nonetheless, additionally accessible by Apple’s traditional gross sales channels, together with its shops, licensed retailers, and on-line marketplaces.
Placing a brand new iPhone on a 10-minute supply app just isn’t solely new in India. Fast-commerce platforms have provided Apple’s newest gadgets on launch day beforehand as properly, as they’ve steadily expanded past groceries into classes together with electronics, magnificence merchandise, and style.
Nevertheless, the market behind these deliveries is rising quickly. India’s quick-commerce sector reached about $9 billion within the first half of 2026, per a latest report by Redseer Technique Consultants, with the variety of month-to-month customers rising to greater than 60 million from 8 million three years in the past. Google and Deloitte individually estimate the market may attain $50 billion by 2030, with non-food merchandise corresponding to electronics, style, and sweetness accounting for 45% of spending.
There have been indicators of robust demand on launch day. BigBasket stated it delivered greater than 300 iPhone 18 Professional and Professional Max items within the first hour of gross sales. Instamart instructed TechCrunch that Bengaluru led the iPhone 18 Professional-series orders on its platform, adopted by Delhi. The Burgundy 256 GB iPhone 18 Professional was Instamart’s hottest variant, accounting for practically a 3rd of its gross sales.
Nonetheless, inside hours of launch, availability of the brand new iPhones turned patchy. TechCrunch discovered the iPhone 18 Professional fashions offered out on some quick-commerce platforms and in some places, whereas they remained accessible for supply elsewhere in cities together with Delhi and Bengaluru.
Tarun Pathak, analysis director at Counterpoint Analysis, stated the launch-day deliveries confirmed that fast commerce may work as a channel for premium smartphones in India’s largest cities, despite the fact that volumes stay small in contrast with total iPhone gross sales.
The flexibility to meet high-value smartphone orders supplies an “early proof of idea,” Pathak instructed TechCrunch. “The important thing query is whether or not this launch-driven demand can translate into common smartphone purchases by quick-commerce platforms.”
Navkendar Singh, affiliate vice chairman at IDC, stated India stood out globally for this sort of quick-commerce supply and was significantly suited to such purchases as a result of shoppers in main cities had constructed belief within the platforms by utilizing them commonly for on a regular basis purchases. Official tie-ups between manufacturers and the platforms additionally gave shoppers better confidence in shopping for costly merchandise by them, he instructed TechCrunch.
For a product just like the iPhone, the attraction additionally comes right down to “instantaneous gratification,” Singh stated, permitting patrons to keep away from queues exterior shops or ready a number of days for a web-based order to reach. Nonetheless, he cautioned that fast commerce was not but a big gross sales channel for smartphones. Its position round new iPhone releases is basically a “launch-day advertising and marketing phenomenon” that “creates good noise across the launch,” he stated.
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