The Secret War in Indian Fashion Isn’t About Style—It’s About Speed

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The Secret War in Indian Fashion Isn’t About Style—It’s About Speed

There’s a strange shift unfolding in Indian fashion right now. And no, it’s not the kind Instagram obsesses over—no new aesthetic, no clever color palette, no “core” bubbling out of nowhere. It’s something that sounds boring, almost administrative. But in 2025, it may be the most powerful force reshaping the sector.

Delivery time.

Over the past year, Myntra has quietly taken a back-end function and dragged it into the strategic spotlight. Its rapid-commerce arm, M-Now, now promises fashion delivery in 30 minutes to two hours across parts of Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Pune. In just twelve months, it has scaled to 80+ dark stores, 940 pincodes, 20% customer penetration, and drives 10% of all orders in the zones where it operates.

And here’s the kicker: fashion—not beauty, not electronics—has been the fastest-growing category. For many consumers, this feels like a delightful extra. A convenience feature. A grocery-style “quick commerce” imitation dressed in pastels instead of potatoes. But that instinct misses the real story.

Because the question isn’t why do consumers want clothes instantly? The question is: what is left for fashion platforms to compete on when everything else can be copied? And the uncomfortable answer for the sector is this: speed may be the last real moat standing.

A decade ago, Indian fashion still had oxygen. Brands differentiated through silhouettes, storytelling, fabrics, retail experiences, or scarcity. If you wanted a particular aesthetic, you went to a particular label.

E-commerce shattered that.

Most Indian apparel brands today source from overlapping clusters—Tiruppur, Noida, Gujarat. A shirt that trends on one platform will appear across catalogues within days. Anything remotely popular is cloned at alarming speed. Fast fashion isn’t a vertical—it’s now the default operating system.

Then came the distribution crunch. Meta and Google grew more expensive. Influencer content became background noise. Discovery shifted from brand loyalty to algorithmic feeds. Search “black dress” on any marketplace today and you’ll scroll past thousands of nearly identical product shots.

Add India’s perpetual discount culture—monthly mega sales, festival deals, platform cashbacks—and margins evaporate faster than brand equity. So if design is copied, marketing is unaffordable, discovery is algorithmic, and margins are squeezed, what does a platform compete on?

Speed. Speed, and the machinery required to make speed possible.

That’s where M-Now enters the picture.

The Hidden Infrastructure Behind Instant Fashion

From a distance, M-Now may look like a new delivery badge on the app. In reality, it’s an entirely different organism. A typical e-commerce warehouse can deliver in a day or two. M-Now delivers in 30 minutes to two hours. The operational difference is enormous.

It requires:

• Hyperlocal dark stores with curated fashion inventory

• High order density across micro-zones

• Predictive stocking algorithms tied to real-time demand

• Teams that can pick-pack-dispatch in minutes

• A fleet optimized for dozens of tiny trips, not long-haul batches

In other words: a logistics machine built for speed, not scale.

Most young D2C brands simply cannot replicate this. Even large marketplaces struggle to match the intensity of such infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the rest of the retail universe is moving in a similar direction. According to a Bain–Flipkart study, quick commerce already accounts for 10% of India’s e-retail spending, and is projected to grow 40%+ annually until 2030. The next layer—rapid commerce (4–6 hour delivery)—is forecast to become a $20 billion GMV market with a $2 billion logistics opportunity by the end of the decade.

Fashion fits perfectly into this emerging window:

• Higher margins than grocery.

• More urgency than electronics.

• Zero perishability.

Unsurprisingly, Myntra isn’t alone anymore. In mid-2025, Reliance Retail launched AJIO Rush, offering four-hour delivery across six cities and over 100,000 styles. Reliance claims early unit economics already look promising: higher order values, lower return rates, sharper demand clustering.

This is no longer a convenience layer. It’s an arms race.

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Speed as Strategy, Speed as Moat

A T-shirt can be copied overnight. A logo can be cloned. A design language can be imitated in a week.

But an 80-dark-store hyperlocal network with real-time demand prediction?
A citywide, four-hour delivery grid with positive unit economics? That is extremely hard to duplicate.

Speed stops being a feature. Speed becomes a moat—capital-intensive, operationally complex, and dependent on geographic sequencing.

And moats matter because of how consumer psychology works. Once a shopper experiences “I ordered at 6:30 and I wore it at 8,” everything else feels archaic. The baseline shifts. Expectations reset.

This is the transformation Myntra is betting on: that the next frontier of loyalty is not design, not discounts, not influencers—but certainty.

But Is Instant Fashion Actually Sustainable?

To understand whether this model can last, it helps to glance sideways at India’s quick commerce market.

Yes, the sector has ballooned—over $6–7 billion since 2022, projected to grow 40% annually. It now accounts for more than two-thirds of all online grocery orders. But analysts warn the boom could be difficult to sustain, especially outside metros. Apply that caution to fashion, and four challenges immediately stand out:

1. Cost: Running 80–100 dark stores isn’t cheap. A 30-minute promise burns money. Fashion also carries more SKUs than grocery—meaning more stock, more working capital.

2. Geography: M-Now and AJIO Rush are metro phenomena. Try doing this in Tier-II India and the math collapses. Density is destiny.

3. Returns: Fashion returns are a persistent headache—due to fit, color expectation, impulse purchases. Early AJIO Rush data suggests urgent orders may have lower return rates, but the jury is far from out.

4. Competition: Nykka Fashion, Myntra, AJIO, quick-commerce startups like Slikk and NEWME—everyone is circling the same opportunity.

If instant fashion becomes table stakes, the moat narrows.

So Why Push This Model At All?

Because in a landscape where every other moat has eroded, speed is the least fragile.

Speed creates habit. Habit creates lock-in. Lock-in creates monetisation.

If M-Now or AJIO Rush becomes the default for last-minute wardrobe needs—office events, date nights, weddings, vacations—those platforms aren’t just selling garments. They’re selling assurance, delivered on demand.

And in an industry where brand stories blur and products look identical, certainty might be the only thing left worth paying for.

Interested in learning more about quick commerce? Check out our previous coverage here:

• The Indian Consumer at 2030

• How Quick Commerce Apps Are Monetizing Your Attention

• The New Battleground of E-Commerce: TikTok’s Trials and Temu’s Rise

• The Great Reset of 10-Minute Delivery Apps in India

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Peeyush and Mohit

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