Southeast Asia’s quick commerce market reached US$7.3 billion in gross merchandise value in 2025, accounting for 4.6 per cent of the region’s e-commerce market but less than 1 per cent of total retail, according to new research from Momentum Works.
The figures confirm what industry observers have long suspected: the infrastructure for rapid delivery exists, but consumer habits have yet to catch up.
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The report offers a corrective to the breathless narratives that have dominated quick commerce discourse in the region. Whilst platforms, retailers, and e-commerce players are converging on the same hyperlocal opportunity, the more critical question is not how big quick commerce will get, but how it will develop differently across Southeast Asia’s fragmented markets.
Unlike India, where platform-run dark stores have effectively leapfrogged offline retail to serve affluent metro consumers, or China, where a decade of food delivery investment built the hyperlocal rider density that underpinned quick commerce, Southeast Asia has dense existing retail networks that shape a fundamentally different growth path.
Grocery promised scale, but online penetration remains stuck at 4.2 per cent
Quick commerce in Southeast Asia was built on grocery. The category offered high purchase frequency, broad consumer relevance, and a clear value proposition: getting essentials delivered in under 30 minutes without leaving home. Yet online grocery penetration across the region stands at just 4.2 per cent, with Indonesia at 2.8 per cent and Singapore leading at 9.7 per cent.
That makes quick commerce a subset of an already-limited market. Consumers in Southeast Asia remain wedded to offline grocery shopping, whether through traditional wet markets, neighbourhood mini-marts, or modern supermarkets.
The challenge is structural. Offline retail in Southeast Asia works remarkably well for most consumers—mini-marts like Alfamart and Indomaret blanket Indonesian cities. Thailand’s convenience ecosystem is tightly controlled by conglomerates with little incentive to disrupt their own offline networks. Singapore has high modern trade penetration, but limited geographic scale.
In this environment, quick commerce cannot simply replace offline retail. Instead, it must extend it, layering on-demand fulfilment over infrastructure that already serves consumers efficiently. Platforms are now responding by expanding aggressively beyond grocery into general merchandise, personal care, pharmacy, and other categories.
E-commerce platforms double down: 3.4 per cent of GMV now quick commerce
Quick commerce is emerging as the next battleground for Southeast Asia’s dominant e-commerce platforms. According to Momentum Works, 3.4 per cent of the region’s e-commerce GMV is now fulfilled through quick commerce networks, a meaningful early indicator of where platform competition is heading.
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Shopee is leveraging ShopeeFeed’s fulfilment infrastructure to roll out instant delivery across multiple markets. Lazada has launched on-demand grocery fulfilment through RedMart Now in Singapore. Grab is expanding categories offered on GrabMart from grocery to general merchandise and beauty by working with supermarkets and retailers.
The strategic shift is clear: platforms that built their businesses on next-day or same-day delivery are now racing to offer sub-hour fulfilment. What distinguishes Southeast Asia from other markets is that quick commerce here is built on existing infrastructure rather than created from scratch. E-commerce platforms are not building vast networks of dark stores. Instead, they are integrating with online grocery operations, supermarkets, mini-marts, and retailers, creating a more distributed, asset-light model.
This approach is operationally complex but potentially more sustainable. It avoids the heavy capital expenditure of building and stocking warehouses, instead leveraging existing retail inventory and locations. The challenge is that integration and coordination are harder to execute than in a vertically controlled dark-store network.
Southeast Asia diverges from China and India’s playbook
Quick commerce accounts for 4.6 per cent of Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market, compared to 16.6 per cent in India and 7.4 per cent in China. That gap reflects different retail structures rather than simply a lag in maturity.
In China, Meituan and other platforms invested heavily in food delivery for over a decade, building dense hyperlocal rider networks that could be repurposed for grocery and merchandise delivery. In India, low organised retail penetration enabled platform-run dark stores to serve as modern retail for affluent urban consumers effectively.
Southeast Asia has neither of these conditions. Offline retail is already well-developed and fragmented. Food delivery networks exist, but are less dense than China’s. The result is a market where quick commerce must prove its value against alternatives that already work reasonably well.
Six markets, six playbooks: No regional model will scale
One of the report’s sharpest insights is that Southeast Asia’s quick commerce opportunity is fundamentally local, not regional. Each of the six major markets — Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia — has distinct structural realities that shape each operator’s playbook.
In Indonesia, growth is more likely to come from e-commerce platforms than from mini-mart chains. Alfamart and Indomaret have limited incentive to expand quick commerce themselves, given the strength of their offline networks.
Thailand’s mainstream convenience layer is locked up by conglomerates, pushing the quick commerce opportunity toward vertical plays in specific categories rather than broad horizontal platforms.
Singapore meets the structural conditions for quick commerce — high income, dense urban geography, digitally savvy consumers — but is constrained by its market size.
Vietnam’s modern retail has built physical scale, but fresh-grocery habits remain anchored in traditional channels. The Philippines has the lowest modern trade penetration in Southeast Asia, with organised retail concentrated in malls. Malaysia’s retail is structurally fragmented, with no single dominant player.
The implication for operators is clear: a single regional playbook will not work. Success requires deep local knowledge, market-specific partnerships, and tailored strategies that account for each market’s unique retail structure, consumer behaviour, and competitive dynamics.
Demand, not supply, is the binding constraint
Perhaps the report’s most important conclusion is that Southeast Asia has the infrastructure for quick commerce (riders, stores, and platforms) but lacks the consumer habit. Fulfilment and supply are not the problems. Demand density is.
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Closing this gap requires sustained capital to fund price parity with offline and e-commerce. Speed is quick commerce’s natural value proposition, but in a structurally price-sensitive region, mass-market adoption requires pricing at or near parity with alternatives. That takes subsidies, which only well-capitalised platforms can afford.
The question is whether platforms will maintain the discipline to invest in demand generation without burning capital on unsustainable unit economics. Quick commerce in Southeast Asia is real, meaningful, and growing. But it remains in early stages, with the hard work of changing consumer behaviour still ahead.
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