Why printout-happy India may lap up Blinkit's new Q-commerce service

Doorstep deliveries are not limited to food and groceries anymore. Start-ups are expanding the horizon with quick commerce (Q-commerce) services to deliver medicines, personal hygiene products and stationery, among others, in a matter of minutes.

Zomato-owned e-commerce company Blinkit has now blazed a trail by starting a Q-commerce printout service on a pilot basis in Gurugram. 

The company charges ₹9 per page for black & white printouts and ₹19 a page for colour printing. Plus, there is a fee of ₹25 to deliver the printouts at the doorstep of the client. The client is promised the print consignment in 10 minutes.

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“We intend to be an organisation which is always innovating for our customers, and being able to provide services that help them lead better lives remains at the core of the Blinkit mission. We recently launched our print pilot in a few locations (including Sector 43 and Gold Course Road),” said a Blinkit spokesperson. 

The company has plans to expand its business in more locations in the national capital based on the response it receives from the pilot project.

Indians’ fondness for printouts

Blinkit at present is only focusing on catering to academic printing services including rental agreements, visas and passports, with its chief clientele being students and professionals. 

However, knowing India’s penchant for paper, even amid the growing digitisation, printout-as-a-service does appear to be a viable business plan in the country. From Aadhaar card to flight tickets to pay-slips, Indians tend to ‘keep hard copies’ ‘just in case’ even when the soft copy is more than sufficient.

Also, a negligible portion of the population has a home printer. Even in households with multiple computing devices such as desktops and laptops, the printer is seen as a luxury. The cost of consumables (a genuine B&W cartridge costs around ₹1,000 while a colour cartridge costs over twice that) makes the ownership of home printers rather prohibitive for most.

Hence, while the Blinkit pilot currently is meant for bulk printouts, the day may not be far off when the order size gets much smaller.

Jitesh Goel, Product Manager at Blinkit, shared this view in a LinkedIn post on Friday. “Have never had a printer at home and getting it from cyber cafe or library or neighbours or offices has always been cumbersome, specially when it’s needed at the point of approaching deadlines,” he observed. “This should be really useful, specially at the rates it is available at. You just have to upload the file and we will deliver it to you in minutes. And we will delete the uploaded file after delivery. Do try it out and share your feedback.”