Client Background
Doki Foods is an innovative direct-to-consumer gourmet snacking brand in India, crafting healthy, chef-curated snack boxes and clean-label snacks. As consumer grocery shopping habits accelerated rapidly toward 10-to-15-minute quick commerce, Doki Foods recognized that winning visibility on Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy Instamart was essential to owning category market share.
The Challenge: The Dark-Store Inventory Bleed
Unlike conventional e-commerce where inventory is centralized in regional distribution centers, quick commerce relies on hundreds of hyper-local dark stores (micro-fulfillment hubs) serving tight 2–3 km radiuses. Doki Foods faced severe structural challenges:
- Out-of-Stock Ad Spend Wastage: When a specific dark store ran out of Doki Foods stock, platform ad engines would still serve sponsored product cards to local users. Clicks resulted in "Item Currently Unavailable" product pages, bleeding budget with 0% conversion.
- Skyrocketing Acquisition Costs: Initial Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) hovered above ₹320, which compressed contribution margins on impulse grocery basket sizes.
- Peak Hour Bidding Wars: Gourmet snacking demand surges dramatically between 4:00 PM and 9:00 PM (tea-time and late-night cravings), but ad spend was distributed evenly throughout the morning when conversion was low.
The Solution: Engineering-Led Quick Commerce Optimization
Mosaic Brands implemented a dedicated quick-commerce growth stack built around inventory awareness and hyper-local consumer psychology:
1. Dark-Store Level Inventory Tracking
We integrated continuous stock-monitoring protocols across active dark stores in Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, and Bengaluru. Sponsored search campaigns were programmatically automated to pause in specific pin codes the moment inventory fell below critical safety thresholds (3 units), ensuring zero ad rupees were spent on unfulfillable orders.
2. Dayparted Bidding on Snacking Hours
We reallocated 75% of daily advertising budgets into concentrated bidding sprints between 4:00 PM and 9:30 PM. This ensured Doki Foods captured top-shelf sponsored search real estate precisely when office workers and urban families were placing evening impulse snack orders.
3. High-Converting Quick-Commerce Product Imagery
Quick-commerce shoppers spend an average of only 3 to 5 seconds evaluating a product card. We replaced standard packaging renders with high-contrast, benefit-driven product tiles that boldly highlighted flavor profiles ("Tangy Tomato Crisp", "Roasted Makhana"), dietary callouts ("0 Sugar", "Baked Not Fried"), and clear net weight badges.
4. Competitor Shelf Interception
We placed sponsored search targeting on high-intent adjacent generic queries ("healthy snacks", "evening snacks", "protein bar") and competitor brand terms where competing products frequently went out of stock during evening rushes.
The Results
+210% Order Growth
Monthly order volume surged by +210%, scaling past 21,000+ completed orders across Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart.
₹225 Blended CPA
Acquisition cost dropped from ₹320+ to ₹225, representing a 30% reduction in customer acquisition cost.
5.2x Ad ROAS
Blended return on ad spend reached 5.2x during peak evening campaigns across active metro clusters.
Zero Out-of-Stock Spend
Dark-store inventory automation eliminated 100% of wasted ad spend on out-of-stock SKUs.
"The dark-store level inventory sync saved us from wasting ad spend in out-of-stock areas. Our Q-commerce growth was incredibly fast, and Mosaic Brands understood the mechanics of Blinkit and Instamart better than any other agency we spoke with."
— Raghav M.
Co-Founder, Doki Foods