For India’s D2C brands, quick commerce has opened up another route to millions of consumers. But turning that access into profitable growth remains a challenge. Platform commissions, advertising expenses, inventory requirements and frequent discounting can quickly erode the margins brands earn from the channel.
For Gurugram-based personal hygiene brand Pee Safe, however, quick commerce has become one of its most profitable distribution channels, accounting for nearly 40% of domestic revenue and delivering double-digit contribution margins, compared with single-digit margins on traditional ecommerce.
Getting there was far from straightforward.
Pee Safe spent nearly two years struggling to keep its products consistently available on quick commerce platforms. Its existing distributor network could not meet the channel’s replenishment requirements, while products and pack sizes that performed well on ecommerce did not necessarily find buyers on 10-minute delivery apps.
The company eventually overhauled its supply chain, changed how it managed its product assortment and used the consumer awareness it had built over the years to limit its dependence on paid advertising.
The result is a distribution mix in which quick commerce now contributes 40% of domestic revenue, followed by D2C and ecommerce at 35% and offline retail at 25%.
But the significance of Pee Safe’s experience goes beyond this revenue split. It shows how quick commerce economics can differ considerably depending on whether a brand uses the channel to create consumer demand or fulfil demand that already exists.
In an exclusive conversation for The Quick Commerce Code by Inc42 and Nitro Commerce, Pee Safe cofounder Rithish Kumar discussed how the brand built its quick commerce operations, the changes that improved its margins and the challenges of extending that growth into new markets.
From An Early Bet On Instant Delivery To Fixing A Broken Supply Chain
Pee Safe’s origins predate India’s quick commerce boom.
The idea emerged in 2013 after cofounder Srijana Bagaria developed a urinary tract infection following a road trip. The experience prompted Srijana and Vikas Bagaria to explore products that could address hygiene concerns associated with public washrooms.
After several months of product development, they created a portable, alcohol-based toilet seat sanitiser spray that dried quickly after application. The product became the foundation of Pee Safe, which formally launched in 2017 and subsequently expanded into feminine hygiene, intimate care, personal care and wellness.
The brand was entering categories where consumer education and trust were particularly important. Alongside established multinational companies, newer brands such as Sirona, Nua and Plush were also competing for a share of India’s evolving feminine hygiene market.
For Pee Safe, building distribution was central to taking its products beyond the consumers who were already familiar with the brand.
That also explains why the company began experimenting with faster delivery relatively early.
In 2018, Pee Safe listed its products on Grofers, the grocery delivery platform subsequently rebranded as Blinkit. The proposition was different from conventional ecommerce, where consumers often waited a day or more for delivery.
The pandemic-driven acceleration of doorstep deliveries made the channel increasingly relevant. As Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart expanded, Pee Safe saw an opportunity to make products such as sanitary pads, toilet seat sanitisers and other personal care essentials available closer to the time of purchase.
However, the operating model behind its early quick commerce expansion was not designed for the channel.
Pee Safe initially relied on the same distributors that serviced neighbourhood retailers and modern trade outlets to supply quick-commerce platforms.
For distributors accustomed to servicing established retail relationships, managing a much wider assortment, holding inventory and frequently replenishing platform warehouses presented a different set of demands.
Consequently, Pee Safe frequently struggled with stock availability.
The problem wasn’t necessarily a lack of consumer demand. Products that customers wanted were not always available when they searched for them.
By late 2023 and early 2024, the company began changing its approach.
Instead of depending on traditional distributors to manage quick commerce supplies, Pee Safe moved to a model of supplying platform warehouses through third-party warehousing partners, gaining greater control over inventory planning and replenishment.
According to Kumar, the restructuring materially improved fulfilment.
The company reported fill rates of 97-98% during a recent quarter, while on-shelf availability for its core products exceeded 90%. It targets availability above 80% for products outside its core assortment.
These metrics capture different aspects of fulfilment: fill rate measures how much of a platform’s order a brand supplies, whereas on-shelf availability indicates whether customers can actually purchase the product.
The distinction matters because products that remain unavailable on an app cannot generate sales, regardless of the demand for them.
Pee Safe now has a dedicated team of seven to eight people managing quick commerce operations. Kumar monitors performance dashboards daily and, at times, hourly.
The channel has also changed the company’s working-capital cycle. According to Kumar, quick commerce platforms typically settle payments within 30 days, sometimes sooner, compared with longer cycles in traditional and modern trade.
Faster collections offer an advantage, although they do not eliminate the investment required to maintain inventory across warehouses and fulfilment centres.
The operational improvements are also reflected in third-party availability data.
An analysis by Zodiac AI by Nitro Commerce found that Pee Safe maintained average on-shelf availability of 94.7% on Blinkit during 1-25 August 2026, although availability differed across cities.
For Pee Safe, fixing product availability was only the first part of making quick commerce work. The next challenge was understanding which products consumers wanted to buy through the channel and at what price points.
Why Pee Safe Had To Rethink Its Products For Quick Commerce
When Pee Safe began expanding on quick commerce, it had roughly five to six SKUs on the channel. Today, its assortment has grown to more than 60 products across platforms.
But expanding the catalogue did not mean transferring the same packs and pricing that worked on Amazon or in offline retail.
One of the clearest examples came from acne patches.
Pee Safe initially offered a 60-piece pack priced at ₹499, but the product struggled to gain traction. The company subsequently introduced a smaller 12-piece pack at ₹99, which became one of its leading SKUs in the category.
The smaller pack reduced the upfront commitment and suited consumers looking for a quick solution or trying the product for the first time.
Sanitary pads presented a different pattern.
Rather than gravitating towards smaller packs, customers were frequently purchasing larger quantities. Pee Safe responded by moving from a 12-pad pack priced at approximately ₹199 to a 30-pad pack costing around ₹399.
The contrasting experiences highlighted an important distinction: consumers were not necessarily looking for smaller or cheaper products on quick commerce. Their preferred pack sizes depended on the category and the reason for purchasing.
According to Kumar, the ₹100-₹150 price bracket can work well as an entry point across several categories, but the company uses platform-level demand data to adjust its assortment.
The wider beauty and personal care market shows similar differences in purchasing behaviour.
Redseer’s Quick Commerce BPC Brand Index for January-March 2026 found that 50 gm/ml sunscreen packs accounted for 78% of quick-commerce sales for a leading brand, compared with roughly 50% of its ecommerce sales. Larger 80 gm/ml packs accounted for just 2% of the brand’s quick-commerce sales.
Large FMCG companies, including Parle, ITC and Hindustan Unilever, have also developed channel-specific packs and price points to cater to quick-commerce consumers while differentiating their online and offline assortments.
For Pee Safe, the lesson was to approach quick commerce as a distinct retail channel rather than another outlet for its existing inventory.
The brand uses consumer demand, product movement and regional purchasing patterns to determine which SKUs deserve more inventory and where new products should be introduced.
However, the company did not disclose SKU-level sales uplifts or contribution margins, making it difficult to quantify precisely how much the assortment changes contributed to overall revenue or profitability.
That leaves another important part of the story: why Pee Safe is able to generate stronger margins on quick commerce despite the additional costs associated with the channel.
Why Quick Commerce Is More Profitable For Pee Safe Than Ecommerce
One of the biggest challenges for consumer brands on quick commerce is the cost of getting discovered.
A brand entering Blinkit, Zepto or Swiggy Instamart may need to spend on advertising, discounting and promotional visibility while also absorbing platform and fulfilment costs.
For products priced at ₹150-₹200, those expenses can quickly make the economics unattractive.
Kumar estimates that advertising costs in some categories can reach ₹8,000-₹10,000 per thousand impressions, while additional discounts of 10-15% can further reduce the amount brands retain from each sale.
Pee Safe, however, had an advantage when it expanded on quick commerce: a consumer base that had already discovered the brand elsewhere.
After years of building awareness and repeat consumption through Amazon and other channels, Pee Safe found that many quick commerce customers already knew which products they wanted.
Rather than relying entirely on advertisements to generate discovery, consumers were searching for Pee Safe directly.
That distinction has been central to its profitability.
According to Kumar, a substantial share of the brand’s quick commerce revenue comes from organic demand, helping it limit advertising expenditure and avoid excessive discounting.
The company estimates repeat-purchase rates ranging from 20% to 60%, depending on the product category.
Together, existing brand recognition, repeat purchasing and tighter control over promotions have helped Pee Safe generate double-digit contribution margins on quick commerce, compared with single-digit contribution margins on traditional ecommerce.
There is, however, an important distinction between channel-level contribution margins and company-wide profitability.
Contribution margins measure what remains from sales after the costs included in the company’s calculation. They do not necessarily account for every corporate expense, brand-building investment or other cost incurred by the business.
Pee Safe has not disclosed a detailed like-for-like breakdown of platform commissions, advertising, logistics and warehousing expenses across its sales channels.
Nor has it quantified how much of the demand generated on quick commerce is genuinely incremental, rather than shifting purchases from its existing ecommerce channels.
This matters because the profitability of an individual channel can partly reflect brand-building expenditure incurred elsewhere.
Pee Safe’s experience nevertheless points to a potentially important distinction for emerging D2C businesses: quick commerce may be more effective at profitably fulfilling established demand than at creating demand for an unfamiliar brand from scratch.
For Pee Safe, the next test is whether those economics can hold as the company expands its product portfolio and reaches consumers in markets where brand recognition may be weaker.
Why Expansion Beyond Metros Requires Another Playbook
Pee Safe’s quick commerce footprint now extends to more than 6,500 dark stores across 250 cities through Blinkit, according to Kumar.
But distribution has not translated into uniform demand across markets.
Nearly 50% of the company’s quick commerce sales now come from Tier II cities and smaller markets, while southern and western India together contribute approximately 60% of the channel’s revenue.
The expansion has brought the brand into 25+ markets such as Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Dehradun, Indore, Nagpur, Bhopal, Guwahati and Patna.
These markets have required Pee Safe to rethink which products it launches and how it markets them.
Instead of making its entire catalogue available immediately, the company typically enters newer cities with familiar categories such as sanitary pads, where consumer demand is already established.
Products that require more education, such as menstrual cups, are introduced more selectively. Local purchasing patterns also influence these decisions.
Kumar cited stronger demand for menstrual cups in Kerala and panty liners in Maharashtra and Gujarat, illustrating how category preferences can differ across geographies.
The company uses regional and pin code-level data to identify products underperforming relative to national benchmarks and direct advertising spend toward specific markets.
Content is another part of this approach.
Approximately 80% of Pee Safe’s influencer content is produced in regional languages, allowing the brand to communicate with consumers beyond its initial metropolitan customer base.
The company combines this content with geographically targeted marketing to encourage consumers to purchase its products through quick commerce platforms.
Such spending also highlights the limitations of a purely organic-demand model. While existing brand recognition has supported Pee Safe’s margins, reaching new customers and developing unfamiliar product categories may require additional investment.
Interestingly, Pee Safe is now applying elements of its Indian quick commerce strategy abroad.
Can Pee Safe Sustain Its Quick Commerce Advantage?
Pee Safe’s overall financial performance provides useful context for its quick-commerce ambitions.
According to Inc42’s financial data, the company generated ₹82.5 Cr in revenue in FY25, up approximately 44% from ₹57.3 Cr in FY24. It reported a net loss of around ₹4 Cr in FY25.
Kumar said the company’s revenue grew by approximately 60% in FY26, although the financial statements were still being audited at the time of the conversation.
For FY27, he expects revenue growth to exceed 100%. The quick commerce business forms a major part of that ambition.
According to Kumar, Pee Safe’s quick commerce revenue reached an annualised run rate of ₹150 Cr in September 2026. The figure represents the annualised pace of sales at that point, rather than revenue recognised over a completed financial year.
In January 2026, Pee Safe also secured $32 Mn in a Series C round led by OrbiMed, comprising a combination of primary capital and secondary share sales. Its investor base has also included Alkemi Venture Partners and Venture Catalysts.
The funding is intended to support expansion across offline retail, quick commerce, ecommerce and brand marketing.
However, pursuing growth across multiple channels will also require Pee Safe to manage inventory investments, advertising expenditure and competition from both established consumer companies and emerging brands.
Private labels are another potential challenge.
As quick-commerce platforms expand their own product portfolios, they could compete more directly with brands selling through their marketplaces.
Kumar believes Pee Safe’s position in intimate and feminine hygiene offers some protection because consumers place considerable importance on trust when purchasing these products.
“Private labels can be threatening when you don’t have high defensibility. A platform building a private label in women’s hygiene faces a high trust deficit as it takes years to build, and Pee Safe has a head start on that,” he said.
That confidence will be tested as competition increases and platforms develop their own capabilities in categories currently served by third-party brands.
Pee Safe is also looking beyond quick commerce for its next phase of expansion.
While offline retail already contributes a quarter of domestic revenue, the company intends to deepen its presence in the channel. Kumar also sees scope to improve its performance on traditional ecommerce, where he believes the brand remains underrepresented.
The strategy is to expand the categories already demonstrating traction and capture a larger share of those markets, rather than relying exclusively on new product launches.
For Pee Safe, quick commerce has evolved from a difficult distribution experiment into a major revenue contributor. But its experience also shows that getting listed on a platform is only a starting point.
The harder work lies in making products consistently available, matching assortments to buying behaviour and ensuring that the cost of selling does not exceed the value of the demand a brand captures.
Whether Pee Safe can preserve that balance as it expands across categories and geographies will determine how much of its next phase of growth quick commerce can profitably support.
[Edited By Shishir Parasher]
The post How Pee Safe Built A Profitable Quick Commerce Business That Drives 40% Domestic Sales appeared first on Inc42 Media.