Instamart CEO Amitesh Jha on quick commerce, hyperlocal bets and winning the Indian consumer one ad at a time

Time of India

6 days ago

Bengaluru: 'If I like the campaign, maybe it's a problem,' says
Amitesh Jha
with a laugh. 'If I'm confused or scandalised, then the marketing team is doing something right.'
In a landscape where 10-minute delivery is no longer the headline but the hygiene, India's most agile
quick commerce
player is doubling down on
localised SKU curation
, brand launches, and campaigns.
At the ETRetail E-commerce & Digital Natives Summit in Bengaluru,
Instamart
CEO Amitesh Jha sat down for a candid fireside chat offering deep insight into what it takes to run and grow a quick commerce engine in India's most demanding consumer climate.
The Indian consumer, decoded (again and again)
'The Indian consumer changes fast, sometimes even faster than we can model,' Jha observed. 'But some fundamentals never change. They want affordability, trust, convenience and speed. These needs are timeless and they apply to Gen Z as much as to a boomer.'
Quick commerce, he explains, is far more local than it appears. "It's a micromarket business. You can't win by applying national playbooks. What sells in Bucha is very different from what sells in MG Road or Palam Vihar.'
At Instamart, assortment decisions are made not just city-wise, but pin code by pin code. 'You're constrained by time and space. We can't offer an infinite aisle like traditional ecommerce. So we go
hyperlocal
.'
This, he says, is what makes the job challenging and fascinating. 'We sometimes find that two cities in the same state say, Hyderabad and Guntur, can have a 50% difference in their top-performing food SKUs.'
A market of surprises, not assumptions
What excites Jha is how unpredictable demand can be. 'Every six months, our mental models change. A tier 3 town with five lakh people suddenly starts clocking tier 1-like growth. We're constantly recalibrating.'
He's clear on one thing: brands or platforms that get rigid about their assumptions are bound to lose. '
Consumer demand
in India is fluid. If you're not evolving every quarter, you're already behind.'
The art of going viral
Instamart's mango drop campaign, where the colour of the fruit changed depending on the weather, was one such bold move. 'We couldn't run it in Bangalore because it was too cloudy,' Jha chuckled. 'But that's what made it interesting. We don't just want people to watch an ad. We want them to discuss it, debate it, share it.'
But he is quick to clarify: good branding doesn't always show up in next-day dashboards. 'You have to be consistent, long-term, and sometimes uncomfortably bold. If the campaign is making too much sense to the senior leadership… it probably won't go viral.'