Can We Build Quick Commerce on Shopify? Myth or Reality?

Introduction: The Quick Commerce Revolution

Just a few years ago, offering same-day delivery felt cutting-edge. Today, the bar has been raised – consumers no longer ask “Can it arrive today?” — they ask “Will it be here in an hour?”. This paradigm shift has given rise to Quick Commerce (Q-commerce), an ultra-fast e-commerce model built around near-instant delivery. Q-commerce players promise to deliver essentials or orders within minutes – often 10–30 minutes, and at most an hour. From groceries to electronics to construction materials, a new wave of consumer behavior is taking over, centered on immediacy.

However, behind every 60-minute delivery promise lies a complex web of logistics, timing, and technology. For a small or mid-sized online retailer, the idea of managing that complexity can be daunting. There’s a prevalent notion that “only giants like Amazon or well-funded startups can do quick commerce, not a brand on Shopify.” In this article, we’ll explore why that notion is more myth than reality. We’ll do it through the inspiring example of one of our clients HomeRun, a Shopify-based business that cracked the quick commerce code for itself and how modern tools like Scrollengine and MageNative made it possible.

The Myth: “You Need Third Parties or Huge Infrastructure”

When e-commerce founders talk about offering super-fast delivery (say, under 1-2 hours), they often get advised against it. The common refrain: “If you want to scale quick deliveries, use a third-party service – don’t build your own fleet.” The belief is that owning and managing a fleet of drivers is too expensive, complicated, and impractical unless you’re a large enterprise. On the surface, this seems logical. After all, traditional wisdom held that only major retailers or unicorn startups could afford the tech platforms, dispatch teams, and driver networks needed for on-demand logistics.

But times have changed. Technology and the gig economy have leveled the playing field. In fact, the accessibility of modern delivery management software means even smaller retailers can deploy their own fleet solution efficiently. Various myths around in-house delivery are being debunked:

• “It’s only for big companies.” – Not true anymore. Today, a Shopify store can plug into apps and services that handle dispatching, routing, and tracking with tools like Scrollengine's Local Delivery + Pickup - SE, reducing the need for a massive in-house logistics team.

• “It will cost a fortune.” – Owning a fleet does require investment (vehicles, driver pay), but cutting out third-party fees can improve margins in the long run. You gain control to optimize routes and avoid the hidden costs of outsourcing (like surge fees or service commissions).
  
  
• “It’s too inefficient or unreliable.” – Again, modern tech is the game-changer. With the right systems in place, even a small team can achieve high reliability. Advanced route optimization, real-time tracking, and automated customer communication can mitigate delays and inefficiencies that one might fear in an in-house operation. In other words, software intelligence replaces the need for a large dispatch staff.
  
  
• “It won’t scale.” – Start small, learn, and add capacity as demand grows. Scalable fleet management tools let you add more drivers or delivery zones easily when you’re ready, without chaos. Quick commerce startups themselves often began in limited areas and scaled up step by step.
  

In short, the notion that you must depend on third-party couriers or delivery aggregators to offer rapid delivery is outdated. Yes, outsourcing can be useful for some cases, but it’s no longer the only path.

Breaking the Myth with HomeRun’s Story

Meet HomeRun, a startup in Bengaluru (Bangalore), India. HomeRun set out with a bold vision: deliver building and construction materials to customers within 60 minutes a service almost unheard of in the traditionally slow-moving hardware supply sector. Imagine a contractor at a job site running out of crucial material; instead of wasting hours fetching supplies, they can tap a few buttons and have items at the site in an hour. This convenience is what HomeRun promised to provide.

When HomeRun launched, many would have assumed they’d partner with existing courier networks or on-demand delivery apps. Instead, they dared to build the entire quick commerce stack themselves on Shopify. Here’s what they achieved in a short time:

• 60-minute delivery across a major city: HomeRun now serves 50+ pin codes (zip codes) across the Bangalore metropolitan area, consistently meeting their 1-hour delivery promise. This coverage and speed rival what much larger companies offer.
  
  
• An in-house fleet of drivers: They onboarded and manage a fleet of over 100+ delivery drivers (and still growing as demand grows). Unlike many e-commerce stores that hand off orders to third-party couriers, HomeRun’s team assigns orders to their own drivers in real-time. This was a bold move, but it grants them far greater control over the customer experience and delivery quality.
  
  
• Hundreds of orders dispatched daily: Handling high order volumes in a dense city could easily turn chaotic. Yet HomeRun runs its operations with minimal manual intervention, even as live traffic, weather, and other variables change by the minute on Bangalore’s roads.
  
  
• Delighting a new type of customer: HomeRun’s users include construction contractors and homeowners tackling DIY projects. For them, quick delivery isn’t just a luxury – it keeps their projects on schedule. By preserving that productivity (no more runs to the store mid-project), HomeRun is rewriting the rules in its niche, turning logistics speed into a competitive edge.
  

This success didn’t happen by magic. Let’s look at how HomeRun built this quick commerce machine using readily available platforms and integrations.

Building a 60-Minute Delivery Platform on Shopify

HomeRun’s journey is essentially a blueprint for any D2C brand or retailer who wants to add quick commerce capabilities without re-inventing the wheel. The foundation is Shopify, the popular e-commerce platform. HomeRun runs their online store on Shopify, which manages their product catalog, inventory, orders, and payments – the standard e-commerce backend. Using Shopify meant they didn’t have to develop a webshop from scratch, and they could leverage Shopify’s robust infrastructure and app ecosystem.

But fast delivery needs more than just an online storefront – it requires a customer-facing app and an intelligent delivery management system. HomeRun assembled these pieces with two key Shopify-integrated solutions:

• MageNative – The Mobile App Builder: MageNative is a Shopify app/service that quickly converts a Shopify store into a fully functional mobile app for customers. HomeRun used MageNative to launch their customer app on iOS/Android, where users can browse products and place orders with a smooth experience. A mobile app is crucial for quick commerce because customers often order on the go, and features like push notifications can keep them informed. MageNative allowed HomeRun to have a branded app without a lengthy development cycle. It also ensured that the app stays in sync with the Shopify backend (products, inventory, and orders are all connected in real-time).

• Scrollengine – The AI Logistics Engine: If Shopify is the store and MageNative is the front-door, Scrollengine is the brain and nervous system behind HomeRun’s rapid deliveries. Scrollengine is an AI-powered delivery management platform built natively for Shopify integration. Once HomeRun installed Scrollengine, it became their central dispatch and fleet control system. Here are some of the intelligent capabilities Scrollengine brought to the table:
  
  
  • Smart Dispatching: As soon as an order comes in, Scrollengine automatically finds the best driver to assign, based on factors like driver location, availability, and current load. There’s no human dispatcher calling drivers – it’s all algorithm-driven. This smart dispatch ensures minimal delay in getting an order out the door.
    
    
  • Real-Time Driver Tracking: Scrollengine continuously tracks all drivers in the field. HomeRun’s operations team can see where each driver is, and customers can too – the system pushes the assigned driver’s live location to the HomeRun app so customers know exactly where their order is, with dynamically updated ETAs. This level of transparency (“Uber-like” tracking on a map) keeps customers calm and happy, since they’re never in the dark about their delivery status.
    
    
  • Route Optimization: For each order, Scrollengine calculates the optimal route for the driver, factoring in live traffic data, road conditions, and other deliveries in the queue. By optimizing routes, it not only speeds up delivery times but also helps avoid scenarios where a driver takes inefficient paths or gets stuck unnecessarily. It effectively does what a skilled logistics manager would do – in milliseconds, for every order.
    
    
  • Automated Customer Updates: Keeping customers informed is crucial in quick commerce. Scrollengine automates the notification process by sending stage-by-stage updates via multiple channels. For HomeRun, it triggers updates on the mobile app and even on WhatsApp (through an integration with WATI) for events like order confirmation, driver assigned, out for delivery, and delivered. These proactive updates greatly reduce customer anxiety (no one wonders “where’s my order?” because they already know) and cut down the support queries.
    
    
  • Fleet and SLA Management: HomeRun’s ops team uses Scrollengine’s dashboard as a command center. They can monitor all ongoing deliveries, see performance metrics, and manage their 100+ drivers across zones and shifts. The system highlights if any order might breach the 60-min SLA so they can act (re-route or reassign) in real time. Essentially, Scrollengine provides enterprise-grade logistics oversight – but through a clean, user-friendly interface that a small team can easily handle.
    

In HomeRun’s case, these tools worked in harmony. Shopify provided a reliable e-commerce backbone, MageNative delivered a slick mobile app, and Scrollengine handled the heavy lifting of quick logistics. The integration was smooth since all are part of the Shopify ecosystem. Scrollengine, for instance, pulled order details from Shopify automatically and updated delivery status back to Shopify, keeping everything synchronized.

This kind of modular, API-driven approach meant HomeRun didn’t need to write custom code for most of these features. They assembled best-in-class solutions: Scrollengine for logistics, MageNative for mobile, plus other helpful services (like WATI for WhatsApp messaging in HomeRun’s stack). Each tool does what it’s best at, and together they formed a “quick commerce machine” tailored to HomeRun’s needs.

The Role of AI and Automation in Quick Commerce

A decade ago, building your own delivery network would require a whole department of dispatchers and planners working with spreadsheets and phones. Today, much of that complexity is handled by AI-driven software. In HomeRun’s example, Scrollengine’s algorithms make split-second decisions that used to bog down human operators. This highlights a broader point: the AI/ML revolution has made running a fast delivery operation dramatically more feasible for smaller businesses.

What does AI/automation practically do here?

• It turns data (like driver GPS, traffic info, order locations) into instant decisions. No manual assignment of drivers, no guessing which route is best – the system figures it out optimally every time.
  
  
• It provides real-time visibility. Both the merchant and the customer see what’s happening as it happens, which builds trust. For the merchant, an AI system can flag anomalies (e.g. a driver taking too long) so they can intervene proactively.
  
  
• It ensures consistency at scale. Whether you have 5 orders a day or 500 a day, the automated dispatch doesn’t get overwhelmed. This scalability is key for growth – you’re not limited by how much a human team can coordinate.
  
  

In short, AI-powered logistics engines like Scrollengine “simplify routing, fulfillment, and customer communication – so you work less and deliver more”. Quick commerce is as much a software challenge as it is a physical one; and the software has caught up now.

Owning Your Fleet vs. Third-Party Delivery: The Benefits of Control

A pivotal decision for any retailer eyeing quick commerce is whether to use third-party delivery services (courier companies, 3PLs, gig-delivery apps) or to build your own fleet. HomeRun chose the latter, and it’s worth understanding why. While outsourcing deliveries can be convenient to start, owning your delivery network grants significant advantages:

• Quality of Service: When you control the fleet, you can enforce your standards. HomeRun can train its drivers for handling building materials, ensure they are courteous, and follow company protocols. Third-party couriers might not provide that level of consistency or care for your brand’s reputation.
  
  
• Reliability and Speed: Quick commerce is all about speed and reliability. Third parties serve many clients, so your orders might not always be top priority. By having their own fleet in designated zones, HomeRun ensures that drivers are always available for their orders and can be dispatched immediately. They’re not competing with other companies for the fastest driver – the closest driver is automatically assigned to them via Scrollengine.
  
  
• Real-Time Flexibility: If something goes wrong – say a driver has a vehicle breakdown or gets stuck – an in-house system can immediately dispatch a different driver or adjust routes. You’re able to react on the fly. With external services, you often have less visibility and slower response in such situations.
  
  
• Cost Efficiency at Scale: Outsourcing delivery comes with per-order fees or revenue-sharing which can add up. Owning a fleet has fixed costs (vehicles, salaries or payouts), but as volume grows, the cost per delivery can actually be lower than third-party rates. Plus, you avoid surge pricing or holiday premiums that some services charge. As one industry insight put it, relying solely on third parties often “overlooks hidden costs and drawbacks,” while a well-managed own fleet can improve cost efficiency in the long run.
  
  
• Innovation and Data Ownership: When you manage deliveries, you also own all the data – routes, customer preferences, order patterns. This data can be invaluable for optimizing inventory locations, planning new service areas, or even training ML models for prediction. It’s harder to get detailed data from third-party providers. Also, you’re free to experiment (e.g., try electric bikes for delivery or tweak your time slots) when you have control. In fact, many quick commerce pioneers ended up developing proprietary optimizations that became core to their success.
  

Of course, running your fleet does come with challenges – recruiting drivers, vehicle maintenance, operational overhead – and it may not be right for every business. Some may opt for a hybrid approach (own fleet in core areas, third-party beyond). But the key takeaway is: It’s no longer an impossibility for a mid-sized business to operate its own fleet. The HomeRun case shows that with the right processes (they “set up the process and the company runs on the process,” as they say) and the right tools, even a startup can manage a 100+ and growing driver network effectively.

It’s also worth noting how the gig economy makes fleet setup easier. There’s a large pool of independent delivery personnel in most cities now, thanks to the boom of food delivery and ride-sharing apps. Hiring drivers on flexible contracts or per-order payment is quite feasible. In other words, you don’t necessarily need 1000 of full-time salaried drivers – you can have a mix of full-time fleet managers and a roster of gig drivers who pick up jobs through your system. This model has been used by nearly all quick commerce companies (from Instacart to DoorDash to Zepto), and a smaller merchant can tap into it too.

Results: Quick Commerce in Action

For those still wondering if all this effort is worth it, let’s look at the tangible impact HomeRun achieved by building quick commerce on Shopify:

• Rapid Scale: In a traditionally fragmented industry (construction retail), HomeRun scaled to cover most of a major city with on-demand service. They went from zero to serving 50+ pin codes with 60-minute delivery consistently. This would have been hard to imagine without a robust system; with their integrated tech stack, scaling was manageable.
  
  
• Operational Efficiency: With Scrollengine automating dispatch and routing, HomeRun runs a lean operations team. They can handle a large number of orders per day with minimal overhead, as the system does the heavy lifting. There’s no army of call center folks manually coordinating deliveries – it’s all in one dashboard.
  
  
• Customer Experience Boost: Customers enjoy real-time updates and transparency, which boosts trust. HomeRun’s app (powered by MageNative) combined with Scrollengine’s live tracking offers a beautiful delivery experience – customers see a progress bar, live driver location, and accurate countdown for ETA. This level of experience turns delivery from a pain point into a selling point. It drives word-of-mouth and repeat business, because once a contractor knows they can rely on 60-min deliveries, they’re likely to stick with that service.
  
  
• Reduced Failures: By optimizing routes and assignments, HomeRun has managed to reduce failed deliveries and reruns, which are common issues in city logistics. Smart algorithms avoid many human errors like sending the wrong driver or mis-scheduling, so orders are more likely to be completed successfully on the first attempt.
  
  
• Confidence to Expand: Perhaps most importantly, HomeRun’s team now has a playbook and system that works. This positions them to expand to new cities or add more product categories without losing the 60-min promise. The tech stack is scalable and repeatable. That’s a huge strategic advantage. Quick commerce isn’t just about moving fast; as the Scrollengine team puts it, “it’s about moving smart, building trust, and making delivery an asset — not a liability.” In HomeRun’s case, delivery has indeed become an asset to their brand.

Conclusion: Quick Commerce Is Possible for You, Too

The story of HomeRun serves as a powerful proof point that quick commerce is not just for the Amazons and Instacarts of the world. With platforms like Shopify and smart integrations, the barriers to entry have fallen. A motivated small business can piece together best-in-class services and launch a local 30-60 minute delivery offering without building everything from scratch.

If you’re a D2C founder or run an e-commerce store, it may be time to rethink what’s possible for your customer experience. Can you turn delivery speed into your competitive advantage? Do you have customers who would love instant or same-hour delivery for your products? If yes, then the path charted by HomeRun is one to consider. As we’ve seen, the key ingredients are:

• A solid e-commerce foundation – e.g. a Shopify store to handle orders and inventory.
  
• A customer-friendly mobile interface – people should be able to order on the go easily (MageNative or similar can help here).
  
• An AI-driven delivery management system – like Scrollengine, to automate the complexities of dispatch, routing, and tracking.
  
• A willing fleet of drivers – which can start small and grow with demand, leveraging gig workers or dedicated staff as needed.
  
• Defined processes and service standards – treat your delivery operation with the same attention you give to product quality; set standards for speed and communication and use your tools to maintain them.
  

What used to require tens of millions of dollars of investment and a whole engineering team can now be achieved largely by configuring and integrating existing solutions. In the end, building your own quick commerce capability comes down to a strategic choice: trade some dependency on third parties for greater control and potentially greater customer satisfaction. As the myths have been debunked, we know it’s doable and can be highly rewarding.

HomeRun’s leap of faith to manage their own 60-minute deliveries paid off. Your business could be the next to surprise the skeptics. Quick commerce might have started as the playground of startups and giants, but it’s quickly becoming democratized. Yes – you can build Quick Commerce on Shopify. It’s not a myth, but a real option for those bold enough to embrace the new tools and processes at our disposal.

If you’re excited or curious about implementing something similar for your store, now is a great time to explore it. The technology is here, the playbooks are emerging, and consumers are only going to demand faster service moving forward. In the world of AI-driven automation, the only real limit is how big you dare to dream for your customer experience.

Ready to deliver in a flash? 🚚⚡The journey from online store to quick commerce provider might be shorter than you think.

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