Until not too long ago, lots of people were skeptical about whether 10-minute grocery deliveries were really needed, but it appears that 10-minute deliveries companies seem to want to take them way beyond just groceries.
Blinkit has said that it will allow customers to receive passport photos at their doorsteps in 10 minutes. The service is currently available in Gurugram and Delhi. The passport photo service announcement comes after the company had begun delivering printouts to customers in 10 minutes.
“Ever needed passport-sized photos for visa documentation, admit cards or rent agreements at the last-minute?” wrote Blinkit CEO Albinder Dhindsa on X. “Starting today, Blinkit customers in Delhi and Gurugram can get passport photos delivered in 10 minutes! We’re excited to roll out this new service and look forward to your feedback to help us perfect it. Will be gradually scaling this to all the cities we serve,” he added.
To get their passport photos delivered, users will need to upload their pictures to Blinkit’s app. Blinkit will then take printouts of the photos in their dark stores, and then deliver the photos to users. Blinkit says that the photos will be printed on glossy Kodak paper, and pictures will be available in sets of 8,16 and 32. The paper quality will be 210 GSM.
This is a service that could find lots of takers. Phone cameras have meant that it’s possible to take high quality pictures at home against a wall which can be used as passport photos, but people still need to go to a photo studio to get the physical printouts. Blinkit appears to have set up printers in its dark stores, which will allow it to deliver passport photos straight to people’s homes.
And over the last few quarters, Blinkit has been delivering much more than just groceries. It now delivers books, electronics, and home appliances, all within its stated delivery time. Blinkit has experimented with delivering items like ceiling fans and spectacles in 10 minutes, and tied up with Sony Playstation and Apple to deliver their products to customers.
And this seems to be a reimagining of what the 10 minute delivery space can look like. Companies like Blinkit and Zepto had started off selling just groceries, even as they were ignored by competitors like Flipkart which insisted that 10-minute deliveries wouldn’t be sustainable. But these companies have expanded their product offerings with all kinds of products, and seem to now have included services like printout deliveries into the mix. Competitors seem to be waking up to what might end up becoming the new reality — just last week, Flipkart launched its own 10-minute delivery service named Flipkart Minutes. And in a country with extremes of weather, potholed roads, and gridlocked traffic, 10-minute deliveries of all kinds of items straight to people’s homes could be a model that could win in the long run.