India's digitally native brands - we have to stop calling them D2C brands - have had an extraordinary run. In 2020, when lockdowns pushed consumers online, these agile upstarts spotted an opening: while legacy FMCG giants were still figuring out e-commerce, challenger brands could move fast, speak directly to customers, and own entire niches - beauty products free of harmful chemicals, snacks for specific dietary preferences, apparel cut for Indian body types.

What to Expect in This Article

• Reliability as table stakes
• Components of reliability
• Why fat-tail demand breaks Q-com systems
• Designing systems for reliability

Reliability as Table Stakes

In q-commerce, reliability is now assumed. Customers expect the platform to work flawlessly every single time, especially when they have multiple alternatives.

What to expect in this article:

• Fresh as a q-com growth engine
• What makes fresh complex
• Key capabilities
• The new fresh playbook

The Q-Commerce Fresh Equation - Fresh as a Growth engine

Leaders often default to setting targets on every metric and then demanding why numbers are not met. This works fine when problems are linear, where cause and effect are clear, solutions are standardized, and scaling the fix yields predictable results. Targets and dashboards work beautifully in these cases.

Managing a dynamic supply chain is akin to running a pop-up business—constantly adapting to changes, aligning multiple moving parts and ensuring seamless execution despite uncertainty. Nowhere is this more evident than in fresh produce supply chains, where seasonality, quality control and logistics create a complex, ever-evolving challenge. A compelling analogy can be drawn to Spirit Halloween, a retail chain that pops up, scales rapidly and then vanishes until the next season.

In operations and supply chains, efficiency is often about balance i.e., keeping costs low while ensuring steady output.

However, when demand surges, businesses must be able to scale rapidly. Surge capacity is the ability to quickly ramp up order output, logistics or services to meet sudden spikes in demand. Unlike lean methodologies like heijunka, which focuses on leveling demand, surge capacity embraces fluctuations, even if it means temporary inefficiencies.