For some iPhone consumers 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 just a few 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, nevertheless, additionally out there by means of Apple’s ordinary gross sales channels, together with its shops, licensed retailers, and on-line marketplaces.
Placing a brand new iPhone on a 10-minute supply app isn’t completely new in India. Fast-commerce platforms have supplied Apple’s newest units on launch day beforehand as nicely, as they’ve steadily expanded past groceries into classes together with electronics, magnificence merchandise, and trend.
Nonetheless, 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 reach $50 billion by 2030, with non-food merchandise resembling electronics, trend, 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 models within the first hour of gross sales. Instamart informed 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 grew to become patchy. TechCrunch discovered the iPhone 18 Professional fashions bought out on some quick-commerce platforms and in some places, whereas they remained out there 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 greatest cities, although volumes stay small in contrast with total iPhone gross sales.
The flexibility to satisfy high-value smartphone orders offers an “early proof of idea,” Pathak informed TechCrunch. “The important thing query is whether or not this launch-driven demand can translate into common smartphone purchases by means of quick-commerce platforms.”
Navkendar Singh, affiliate vp at IDC, stated India stood out globally for this type of quick-commerce supply and was notably suited to such purchases as a result of customers 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 customers larger confidence in shopping for costly merchandise by means of them, he informed TechCrunch.
For a product just like the iPhone, the enchantment additionally comes right down to “on the spot gratification,” Singh stated, permitting consumers 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 essentially a “launch-day advertising and marketing phenomenon” that “creates good noise across the launch,” he stated.
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