It’s Tuesday, and today we’re focusing on HomeRun, an Indian quick commerce company based in Bengaluru. Founded in 2024 by Pukhraj Grewal, the company recently raised $6.6 million in a funding round led by Sorin Investments, with participation from Titan Capital Winners Fund, Sparrow Capital, Consumer Collective by Atrium, and Helios Holdings.

This is not my first, and I assure you not my last article about India’s quick commerce. The industry spans not just traditional grocery delivery (KiranaPro), but also includes things like fashion product delivery (Slikk) and even house help (Snabbit).

The next industry where the quick commerce model is being tried is construction, or building materials to be more specific. So this is a story about two things: the market (construction materials) and the medium (quick commerce).

As the Indian economy continues its steady growth, the sector that inevitably grows with it is construction. The residential construction market alone has reached $252 billion, with current estimates suggesting it will rise to $350 billion by 2030. The building materials market during the same time frame is expected to grow from $105 billion to $166 billion.

When it comes to housing, JLL’s data for the top seven cities suggests that housing sales had already hit 161,604 units in the first nine months of 2022, which was above the full-year 2021 total of 128,064 units. By 2025 they were already at 270,323 units.

While the overall market dynamics are important for the building materials segment, what can really accelerate demand is the premium segment. At the end of the day, only households with disposable income will spend heavily on renovations.

And recently there has been a clear premiumization trend. In 2024 homes priced above ~$100,000 constituted 53% of sales, then 63% in 2025, with mass housing demand declining. Furthermore, if we look at pretty much every home improvement category, we see the same pattern: it is growing faster than the construction market overall or the country’s GDP.

People now renovate every 10–12 years, whereas previously it was once in a generation. That shift is driven both by cultural changes and the rise of the middle class. Meaning there are families who already own an apartment or a house and want a full renovation, as well as those buying their first home and wanting to design it according to their taste.

In Bengaluru these trends are more pronounced than almost anywhere else in the country. The residential market has been expanding rapidly. 2024 was a record year for the city with a historically high number of launches. A similar story is playing out in office spaces, which not only create additional demand for building supplies but also signal strong demand for residential housing. Driven by its tech economy, it is hard to see demand for construction slowing down, whether it is data centers or residential buildings to house the people working around at those data centers.

Major building-materials players in India struggle to track their multi-tier dealer and distributor systems. Inventory mismatches, delayed restocking, and inaccurate demand forecasting persist because many distributors still rely on manual stock management. In India’s cement industry, which produces over 570 million metric tons annually, a single delivery delay caused by manual tracking systems can trigger substantial project delays. Meanwhile retail distribution is fragmented and often lacks transparency in both availability and pricing.

And that bothers construction professionals. A survey showed that availability of materials ranked as the second most significant factor affecting on-site productivity, while storage area for materials ranked third. Improper access to materials, or the inability to store them on-site (hence the reliance on frequent deliveries), leads to construction delays which, at the end of the day, increase costs for everyone: the construction company and the end customer.

One data point helps underscore the challenge. A KPMG survey found that 39% of respondents reported missing budget and/or schedule targets by more than 20% over the prior year because of ineffective risk management. Not all of that is related to materials, but it is still a strong signal that execution risk in Indian construction remains high enough that faster procurement speeds and more predictable supply can make a meaningful difference.

The Indian consumer has been adopting what quick commerce has to offer. Rapidly. Some basic facts:

But what is even more important for us is that quick commerce is moving beyond groceries. According to Bain, 15–20% of quick commerce GMV now comes from categories beyond grocery, including general merchandise, mobile phones, electronics, and apparel. And that share is growing. One example is Instamart, where non-grocery items have seen their sales share increase from 26% to 32% in just one quarter.

Now, delivering mobile phones is one thing. Cement delivery is a whole other proposition. But HomeRun actually does that.

HomeRun offers something I thought I would never see: the company delivers construction materials across Bengaluru in 60 minutes. Those materials include cement, plywood, paint, wires, lighting, various furniture hardware, and much more. Overall, there are over 2,000 SKUs that contractors and homeowners can order through HomeRun’s app or website.

The value that HomeRun offers that the it eliminates issues around pricing, availability, delivery speeds, and bulk purchasing. Prices and availability are visible on the website, delivery is rapid, and there is no minimum order value. If someone wants to buy just one bag of cement, they can do that.

And while the actual product may seem antithetical to what quick commerce typically delivers, the experience is not really different from what you would get when ordering groceries:

One more important thing to mention is that HomeRun emphasizes the authenticity of the products it provides through claims like “100% original material” and “verify product authenticity using official manufacturer apps,” with manufacturer warranties and quality certifications attached to the products as well.

I like businesses like these. They are very easy to understand and it is clear how they work. There is obvious value here, but delivering that value is the hard part.

The central point in HomeRun’s business model is operational coordination: it has to source branded materials reliably, hold the right inventory close to demand, and fulfill orders fast enough.

Construction materials are a commodity and notoriously low margin. At the same time, HomeRun positions itself as a reliable supplier that can deliver goods in 60 minutes. To make that work, HomeRun has to combine two businesses in one: an inventory-led construction materials retailer and a hyperlocal fulfilment network.

The first task is building a dependable supply base, which HomeRun has done by working directly with manufacturers and authorized distributors. The second is offering competitive pricing, which is partly achieved by dealing with established suppliers and buying in large enough quantities. Third, it has to decide which materials to stock, in what quantities, and keep them available across a broad assortment of more than 2,000 SKUs.

The second layer is fulfilment.

HomeRun places inventory across five dark stores in Bengaluru, using them as local fulfilment nodes. It then tightly manages delivery operations through its own driver fleet, with each driver assigned to a specific zone, performance continuously tracked, and rerouting available in case of delays.

Taken together, the model puts pressure on three things at once: stock availability, replenishment discipline, and delivery reliability. The customer experience works only if HomeRun can place the right materials close to demand and move them quickly without tying up too much capital in the process.

The company makes money through materials sales and paid deliveries.

HomeRun handles 200–250 orders daily with an average order value of about $70. In one year it has expanded from serving 75 pin codes to 105.

The bear case revolves around two potential issues. The first is economic. Even if demand continues to grow, the business still has to absorb warehousing costs, delivery operations, and customer support in a category where customers are price-sensitive. The model clearly delivers customer value, but it may struggle to deliver economic value to the business.

The second is inventory complexity. The products are bulky, demand is uneven, and even repeat customers are unlikely to order the same thing twice, which is markedly different from groceries. That makes forecasting and stock placement difficult. If HomeRun cannot keep the right assortment in the right dark store, the 60-minute promise may end up being not quite 60 minutes after all.

There is no question about the value HomeRun provides. If the company manages to unlock the levers it needs to execute on the model, it could scale not only within Bengaluru but expand beyond the city and replicate the same success elsewhere.

What is important to note here is that most grocery quick commerce services are not solving truly critical problems. They are largely nice-to-have solutions rather than need-to-have ones. HomeRun, in many cases, can be the opposite. Generally speaking, cooking is an activity with much lower stakes than construction.

What’s the one lesson investors and founders can take away from HomeRun?

A business model developed in one industry can sometimes be applied to a completely different one, where it may actually create more customer value than in the original industry.