Premium housing societies in big Indian cities get about three times the deliveries of the average home
Our estimate for FY26, from the latest data available, for India's cities of more than a million people: the average home gets 27-35 deliveries a day per 100 homes, counting parcels and quick-commerce and food orders. Premium housing societies get 58-118, two to four times as many, while ordinary gated societies sit only a little above the average. Food and quick-commerce riders, not parcel couriers, bring most of a premium society's deliveries.
· LAIA Observatory · 12 min read
Peak-hour deliveries at a housing society gate.
India still ships more parcels than it delivers meals and groceries: about two parcels for every quick-commerce or food order in FY26, the financial year to March 2026 (1). Parcels come with couriers, who often carry several for one building; meals and groceries come with riders, the two-wheeler delivery staff of food and quick-commerce apps, who bring one order at a time and hand it over at the gate. But that national ratio is the wrong number for a developer in a big city. Riders are concentrated in big cities, while parcels go everywhere, and quick-commerce sales there more than doubled in FY26 (2). In big-city homes riders now roughly match parcels, and in premium societies they lead.
This article sizes what arrives at a home by kind of household, explains why the national picture misleads, and sets out what that means for a building's design. Every count is for FY26, from company figures where they exist; the national parcel count is Redseer's FY25 figure grown 20-30%, our assumption, explained under the first table (3). Figures we derived cite a source that reads "Our calculation" in the Sources list.
Deliveries depend on the kind of home
A national total divided by every household gives the average home, but orders are not spread evenly. Better-off households order far more, and many of them live in gated societies, the best-off in societies run through a community app such as MyGate or NoBrokerHood. Redseer, an Indian consulting firm, counts about 150,000 gated communities, with incomes five to seven times the national average (6). On its figures they hold about 40-45% of the households in India's top 50 cities by now (our calculation from its 2021 count) (7). It expects them to account for nearly 40% of India's online retail by 2031 (8). The app-managed societies reach 6-7 million homes, which MyGate itself describes as premium households: about 10-12% of the homes in these cities (6, 9). At the other end, about 15-16% of households in the million-plus cities lived in slums in 2011 (10). A national household survey in early 2025 shows how steep the gradient is: in these cities 70% of the best-off homes had bought goods online in the previous month, against 28% of the poorest 15% (11, 12).
Premium societies get about three times the deliveries of the average home (per 100 homes a day, FY26)
Every row except the average rests on a measurement: the National Sample Survey's 2025 telecom survey, which asked 2,424 households in these cities how many times they had bought goods online in the past month (11). Ranked by spending, homes order more the better off they are, and we read the rows off that gradient (12). The survey sets the shape, not the level: people recall fewer orders than they place, so the city totals set the level. Premium is the widest row because two measurements disagree. The survey stops at 30 orders a month and puts the best-off homes at about 58 per 100 a day. MyGate's chief executive reported 1.2 deliveries a home a day in its societies in 2019, about 120 (13). MyGate then covered about 2,500 communities, probably its best-off early users, and quick commerce had barely begun (13). The truth for a given society lies between. On this reading, ordinary gated societies sit only a little above the average; the survey records spending, not the type of home, so it cannot show whether the gate itself makes a difference.
A 100-home premium society gets about 24-53 parcels and 33-68 rider orders a day
24-53e-commerce parcels on a normal day, returns included (4)
33-68quick-commerce and food orders on a normal day (4)
Our calculation, FY26 (April 2025 to March 2026), India's cities of more than a million people. Slots are parcels held at once on a festive peak day, by how long each parcel waits before collection.
Each range is a 95% range from one joint calculation: it allows for the survey's sampling error, for the city average anywhere in its range and for premium anywhere between the survey and MyGate, and in every case the kinds of home add up to the city total (12). That constraint is what keeps the rows narrow: if premium homes take more, the others must take less.
Parcels still lead nationally, but in big cities riders have drawn level
Across India, e-commerce parcel shipments outnumbered quick-commerce and food orders combined by about 2.3 to one in FY25 (22), and by about two to one in FY26 (1). In big cities the lead has gone, because the two streams are spread very differently.
Nationally, Redseer (an Indian consulting firm that sizes logistics markets) counts about 7 billion parcel shipments in FY25 (17). Quick commerce and food together came to roughly 2.9-3.3 billion orders: Redseer's 1.1-1.3 billion quick-commerce shipments plus its 1.8-2.0 billion food delivery shipments (15, 22, 23). In FY26, with parcels up 20-30% and company order counts for quick commerce and food, the national ratio is down to about 1.7-2.4 (1).
The big-city picture is different:
Parcels reach every part of the country. Redseer puts 62% of shipments in smaller cities and towns, which leaves about 38% for big cities (24).
Quick commerce and food are concentrated. About 80% of quick commerce and 70-80% of food delivery sits in the largest cities (15, 25, 26).
Quick commerce lives in eight cities; parcels go everywhere
The 8 metros
~80%of quick-commerce sales value is in these 8 metros
62%of e-commerce parcel shipments are in smaller cities and towns
The 8 metros and nearby cities
Other cities over 1 million
Cities of 100,000 to 1 million
Quick commerce: Redseer, FY25, by value (26). Parcels: Redseer, FY24; smaller cities and towns are those outside the metros and other million-plus cities (24). Metros as usually defined in Indian market reports, with their suburbs (cities within 45 km); Redseer does not list its eight. Circles: every city of 100,000 people or more, sized by population; towns below that are not drawn.
Sources: 24, 26 · Boundaries: DataMeet (CC BY 4.0) · Cities: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Applying those shares to the national counts puts big-city parcels at about 1.0-1.3 times quick-commerce and food orders combined in FY25 (22). On Redseer's lower parcel count, rider orders are already ahead. By FY26 the two are roughly level: big-city parcels are about 0.8-1.2 times rider orders (1).
Parcels still lead nationally; in big cities the two are level
Our calculation, FY25 except the FY26 rows (parcels grown 20-30% from FY25: Redseer forecasts 23-27% a year; the low end allows for the market outside Meesho growing about 15%, as in FY25; quick-commerce orders from company counts; food orders up 13-20%, as at Swiggy and Zomato). Other FY25 rows swap in Redseer's lower parcel count (4.9-5.3 billion, which leaves out hyperlocal and grocery) or its higher rider count (3-4 billion on-demand local deliveries, in place of about 2.9-3.3 billion quick-commerce and food orders). Big cities = the 8 metros plus other cities above 1 million people. Each alternative moves the count toward riders; parcels still lead nationally in every case. Below 1, rider orders outnumber parcels.
Rider orders are growing several times faster than parcels
The national lead is shrinking every year. FY24 to FY25 is the only year in which all three streams can be compared on volume, and quick commerce roughly doubled (23, 24).
Quick-commerce volumes grew several times faster than parcels or food in FY25
Company figures show the pace continuing. Indian companies report by financial year, April to March. In FY26 the three largest quick-commerce platforms took about 2 billion orders between them (our calculation): Blinkit 916.6 million (32), Swiggy's Instamart 412.2 million (32) and Zepto about 640 million, a figure from press coverage of its draft prospectus (33). That is more than Redseer counted for the whole market a year earlier.
Quarter by quarter, one grocery app has now caught up with a national parcel network. At the end of 2023, Delhivery, a national parcel courier, shipped about 3.6 times as many parcels a quarter as Blinkit took orders: 201 million against 56 million (our calculation) (34, 35). In April-June 2026, Blinkit took 331 million orders (36). Delhivery shipped 322 million express parcels in the same quarter, even after buying a rival courier, Ecom Express, in July 2025 (37, 38). A year earlier, Delhivery shipped about 30 million more a quarter than Blinkit took orders (our calculation) (32, 39).
Blinkit now takes more orders a quarter than Delhivery ships parcels
Millions per quarter. Parcels (green): express parcel shipments, returns and reverse pickups included (Shadowfax: its express orders). Riders (dark): quick-commerce orders. Delhivery's jump from Jul-Sep 2025 includes Ecom Express volumes. Lines bridge quarters a company has not published; Zepto has published quarterly orders only for Oct-Dec 2025 and Jan-Mar 2026. Blinkit's Jul-Sep 2024 and Shadowfax's Jan-Mar 2025 are our arithmetic from yearly totals and growth rates. Food delivery is not shown: neither Swiggy nor Zomato publishes a quarterly food-order count.
Delhivery is one carrier among several, so this is not a national comparison. What it shows is speed: Blinkit's orders nearly doubled in a year, while Delhivery's parcels, acquisition included, rose about 55% (36, 37). No FY26 national parcel count exists yet, but on our FY26 estimate riders and parcels are roughly level in the big cities (1).
Who comes to the gate more often: couriers or riders?
Orders are not visits. A rider usually brings one order; a courier may bring several parcels for the same building on one trip. In a gated society riders make most trips even if every courier brought only one parcel per visit, and the more parcels each courier visit carries, the wider the gap.
Of every 100 visits to a gated society's gate, riders make 53-80
Scenario, our calculation, FY26. Gated-society mix (0.73-0.88 parcels to each quick-commerce or food order) applied to one society; one rider visit per order. Pale squares show the range.
In a 100-home premium society that means about 24-53 courier visits a day at one parcel per trip, about 12-27 at two and about 8-18 at three, against about 33-68 rider visits (4). We found no published figure for parcels per courier visit, so we cannot say which panel is typical. One parcel per visit is the floor, so the first panel is the most courier-heavy case. If riders carry several orders to the same society, rider visits fall.
On the busiest day, parcels run at about two and a half times the average
For parcels, the festive quarter brings only a modest rise. The peak day brings a large one, and that is what a parcel store has to absorb.
Delhivery's festive quarter runs about a tenth above the rest
Quarterly shipments, millions, April 2023 to March 2025, before the Ecom Express acquisition.
In its October-December quarter, Delhivery's express parcel volumes ran about 10-13% above the April-September quarters, in both 2023 and 2024 (44). But in the 2025 festive season it dispatched 7.2 million orders on its record day, roughly two and a half times an average day (21).
Delhivery's record festive day was 2.2-2.7 times an average day
Millions per day. Average days are the quarter's express parcel shipments ÷ 92 days (our calculation); the record day is dispatched orders. The 2025 averages include Ecom Express volumes.
For a single gate, the transferable figure is the ratio, not the 7.2 million. We assume a society's peak mirrors Delhivery's national one, because no gate-level peak is published. For quick commerce and food, any festive effect is lost in quarter-on-quarter growth.
Cutting the wait saves as much space as halving the parcels
A parcel store has to hold every parcel until its resident collects it, so the space it needs depends on two numbers: how many parcels arrive on the peak day, and how long each one waits. The second matters as much as the first. If parcels wait a day, a 100-home premium society holds 53-143 at once on a festive peak day; if they wait half a day, 26-72, the same saving as halving the parcel count (5).
If parcels wait a day, a 100-home premium society needs 53-143 slots at peak
Scenario, our calculation, FY26, premium society. Peak-day parcels times the average days a parcel waits before collection, which is unmeasured in India.
A building cannot choose how many parcels its residents order, but it can shorten the wait: notify residents the moment a parcel arrives, and let them collect at any hour. We found no published measure of how long parcels wait at Indian society gates.
What it means for a building
Gate handoff. In a premium society, plan for more rider visits than courier visits: riders bring more orders than couriers bring parcels, and a courier can combine several parcels in one visit. Riders hand over directly and need a fast, sheltered handoff point rather than storage. No published figure gives riders per hour at a gate, so the busiest hour has to come from a gate log.
Parcel storage. Size the parcel store for peak-day parcels times the expected wait (previous section). Shortening the wait is the lever a building controls.
Rules. Indian rules offer little help. Karnataka's bye-laws require only an office-cum-letter-box room of 10-40 sq m, depending on flat count (54). The national model bye-laws contain no parcel or rider provision that we could find (55). Elsewhere, the US Postal Service requires one parcel locker for every five mailboxes in new apartment buildings (56), and Changshu in China sets minimum parcel-room areas that scale with development size (57).
Logistics operators hold the missing number: parcels per courier visit. Publishing even a big-city average would settle who dominates the gate. Investors should watch how far quick commerce spreads beyond the metros: metros already account for only about 60% of its growth in sales value (2).
The objection: the totals may be off, returns inflate parcels, and visits are the wrong unit
The strongest alternative reading has three parts. The choice of totals can be tested; the point about returns has to be conceded; the point about visits is partly conceded.
Which total. Redseer's FY25 e-commerce totals differ between reports, at 6.8-7.4 billion, 4.8-5.5 billion and 4.9-5.3 billion, with no published reconciliation (15, 16). Swapping in the lower parcel count or Redseer's larger 3-4 billion count of local deliveries (27) narrows the national lead but never reverses it; the range chart shows every case. If the 6.8-7.4 billion count included local deliveries, our base case would double-count; Redseer's wording points against that, but its footnote does not settle it (16, 17).
Returns. Both Redseer parcel series count returns and reverse pickups (15, 17), and no usable figure gives their share. Some belong in a gate count anyway, because a pickup still brings a courier to the gate. On the rider side, Zomato's order count includes cancelled orders, which bring no one (58).
Visits are the wrong unit for sizing space. A parcel has to be held until the resident collects it; a rider hands food or groceries over directly. We concede this in part. The visit count sets how busy the gate is and how much handoff space riders need. It says nothing about the size of a parcel room, which depends on peak-day parcels and how long they wait, as the storage chart shows (5).
How we did this
Sources. Redseer's industry reports in the Meesho and Shadowfax IPO documents and its other published reports (FY24-FY26), including its 2021 and 2026 reports on gated communities; Eternal, Swiggy and Delhivery filings and shareholder letters (FY19-FY27); Zepto's June 2026 draft prospectus and Meesho's FY26 results, via press coverage; MyGate's site and its chief executive's statements, via Business Today and The Ken; Bain's 2023 survey; the 2011 Census, the 2018 National Sample Survey, the 2019-21 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) and the National Sample Survey's 2025 telecom survey (household online purchases, unit-level data). All calculations are ours: a source that reads "Our calculation" in the Sources list marks them, and the "How we got this" boxes set them out.
Big-city shares. The shares come from different years and city groups (top 8, top 10 and top 60 cities), and Redseer does not say whether a parcel is counted where it is sent or where it is delivered (24). The biases pull both ways. The quick-commerce shares cover only the top 8 or 10 cities, which favours riders; but they are measured by value, and if big-city orders are larger, value shares overstate order shares, which favours parcels.
Homes behind gates. The 2018 National Sample Survey found 56.4% of urban households had an independent house, so a little under half live in shared buildings (59). Its definition of a flat is far broader than a gated society (60), and the share varies widely by state (60).
Kinds of home. Shares of homes come from Redseer (6, 7), the 2011 Census (10) and MyGate, which describes its societies as premium households (9); orders by kind of home come from the National Sample Survey's 2025 telecom survey (11). Its limits: it records spending, not the type of home, so spending per person stands in for it (a well-off family in an old bungalow counts as premium); it covers goods only, in January-March 2025; and people recall fewer orders than they place, so it gives the gradient and the city totals give the level (12). Household size comes from NFHS-5 (20).
What would change the result: gate logs split by stream, above all from ordinary gated societies; a survey that records the type of home along with online orders; parcels per courier visit; a reconciled Redseer FY25 total; the share of returns; a FY26 national parcel count; the time parcels wait at Indian society gates before collection; and a reconciliation of Redseer's food count with the platforms' own order counts.
About this research. LAIA Observatory and Parcely are both part of LAIA Stem. Parcely designs in-building delivery systems. Every figure here comes from public filings, industry reports and official statistics; the calculations are ours and are set out in the "How we got this" boxes.
Sources
1. Our calculation from sources 3, 15, 17, 18, 28, 32, 33 and 61, FY26
