Southeast Asia’s quick commerce gross merchandise value (GMV) reached $7.3 billion in 2025, equivalent to 4.6 percent of the region’s ecommerce GMV but still less than 1 percent of total retail, Momentum Works said Wednesday.

While platforms, retailers, and ecommerce players are converging on the same hyperlocal opportunity, the more important observation is how quick commerce will develop in the region – not how big it will get, it said in its Quick Commerce in Southeast Asia 2026 report.

Unlike markets like India, where platform-run 1P dark stores have leapfrogged offline retail to serve affluent metro consumers, it noted Southeast Asia has dense existing retail networks – mini marts in Indonesia, conglomerate ecosystems in Thailand, and high modern trade penetration in Singapore.

The result is a market where quick commerce is less about replacing offline retail and more about extending it, layering on-demand fulfilment on top of infrastructure that already works.

The report also identifies demand density as the region’s most critical gap.

While fulfilment and supply infrastructure have matured significantly through existing food delivery networks and offline retail, consumer habits have yet to form at scale.

Closing this gap requires sustained capital to fund price parity with offline, without which quick commerce remains a premium niche, it added.

The report also showed that quick commerce in Southeast Asia was built on grocery in its early days, given the category’s high frequency and broad consumer base.

Yet online grocery penetration across the region remains limited at just 4.2 percent – Indonesia at the lower end of 2.8 percent, Singapore at 9.7 percent – and quick commerce sits as a smaller segment within this already-limited base.

Platforms are now expanding aggressively into adjacent categories such as general merchandise, personal care, and pharmacy, using the same hyperlocal fulfilment infrastructure to capture broader basket occasions.

Meanwhile, dominating ecommerce platforms in Southeast Asia are doubling down on quick commerce, with 3.4 percent of Southeast Asia’s ecommerce GMV now fulfilled through quick commerce networks – a meaningful early indicator of where the next phase of platform competition will play out.

Unlike China, where a decade of food delivery investment built the hyperlocal rider density that underpinned quick commerce, or India, where thin organized retail allowed platform-run dark stores to effectively become modern retail for affluent consumers, it noted Souteasht’s offline retail remains dominant and fragmented.

Quick commerce here is less about replacing offline retail, and more about extending existing retail networks with an on-demand fulfilment layer, it added.

The report also highlighted that there is no single regional model that works across Southeast Asia.

Indonesia’s growth is more likely to come from ecommerce platforms than mini-mart chains, given Alfamart and Indomaret’s limited incentive to expand quick commerce themselves.

Thailand’s mainstream convenience layer is locked up by conglomerates, pushing the opportunity toward vertical plays.

Singapore meets the structural conditions but is capped by market size. Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia each face their own bottlenecks.

Operators expecting one regional playbook to scale will be disappointed, it said.

Speed is quick commerce’s natural value proposition, but in a structurally price-sensitive region, mass-market adoption requires pricing at or near parity with offline and ecommerce, said the report.

That takes sustained capital only platforms can currently afford to spend, it added.

Southeast Asia’s food delivery GMV grows 18 percent to $22.7B in 2025 – Momentum Works