110034 isn’t a pincode you expect to see on a fashion brand’s expansion strategy deck. 

Pitampura is neither Bandra nor Khan Market. It’s a densely populated neighbourhood in Delhi, with a mix of government colonies and well-built kothis (bungalows), inhabited by middle and upper middle-class families. 

Yet, Libas, an Indian wear fast-fashion brand, receives more orders from this pincode than anywhere else in the city. It is also where the brand chose to test quick commerce as a distribution channel. Its dark store in the area stocks over 5,000 units across more than 400 different styles and reaches customers within a seven-kilometre radius in under an hour. 

For Sidhant Keshwani, the co-founder of Libas, the ambition is for his clothes to be available as easily as FMCG products. Think biscuits, cereal, or almond milk.

“We have to build an ecosystem,” he said. “Wherever the consumer is accessing my product, be it online or at a mall, he should find me.”

For Keshwani, who inherited the brand from his father, the ecosystem encompasses the Libas website, e-commerce sites like Myntra, standalone outlets, multi-brand stores, and most recently, quick-commerce platforms like Zepto and Instamart. 

If you’re not everywhere, you risk losing the customer to someone else who is, he said.

That someone else might be brands like Koskii, Fable Street, or The Souled Store, all of which are either experimenting with or expanding their footprint to quick commerce.

And marketplaces are doubling down on it, too. The fashion e-commerce site Myntra now promises 30-minute deliveries with M-Now, while quick-commerce platforms like Blinkit and Zepto continue onboarding fashion brands. Fashion-only quick-commerce services like Zilo, Knot, and Slikk have emerged on the scene in the past year, too. Backing them are VC firms from Peak XV to Nexus Venture Partners and Kae Capital, all of which have together invested over $30 million.

“Quick commerce is looking for the next catalyst. It moved from groceries to other durables, and now it’s looking for something else,” said Devang Parikh, business head at Shoppers Stop, a multi-brand outlet. “And so is e-commerce fashion.”

But all of this raises a very basic question—can you really run out of kurtas?

© The Ken