Manufacturing date, expiry and origin on quick-commerce listings

What changes on 1 October 2026

From 1 October 2026, quick-commerce and e-commerce platforms selling packaged food and consumer goods in India, which reporting names as Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, Amazon Now, Flipkart Minutes and BigBasket, are expected to show a product’s manufacturing date, expiry (or best-before) date and country of origin on the listing itself, not only on the physical pack. FSSAI set 30 September 2026 as the compliance deadline for platforms to make the change.¹

The intent, as reported, is to let a shopper check what they would check by picking up a pack in a store, before paying, rather than only after the box arrives. Damaged or expired stock is described as no longer permitted to be sold through these apps at all. For a brand, that means a listing itself becomes a compliance surface in a way it was not before: the same three facts a warehouse team already tracks for stock rotation now have to surface on the page a shopper reads before checkout.

Why this reaches quick commerce specifically

Quick commerce sells from dark stores close to the shopper rather than from a single large warehouse, and stock turns over fast across many small locations rather than a few big ones. That makes the manufacturing date and expiry date on any one unit harder for a shopper to verify than it would be picking a pack off a supermarket shelf, where the date is printed and in hand before payment.

Reporting quotes Sanjay Jain, director at cold-chain equipment maker Elanpro, saying the new visibility on expiry and best-before dates will put more pressure on quick-commerce operators to strengthen inventory and cold-chain management, particularly for perishables. Frozen, dairy, fresh and other categories carry different storage needs, and the point he makes is that a shopper seeing an expiry date online does not see the temperature history a pack sat through, so first-in-first-out stock rotation and, where relevant, first-expiry-first-out practice matter more once the date itself is visible on the listing.¹ This guide does not evaluate whether any platform’s cold-chain practice meets that standard; it states what a reader can check on the page they are shown.

What is confirmed, and what is still pending

This guide separates two different kinds of statement, because conflating them is the most common mistake in reading a regulation from news coverage rather than the notice itself.

• Confirmed by reporting: a 30 September 2026 FSSAI compliance deadline exists, platforms are described as making the listing changes, and the three fields above are the ones named. Multiple outlets carried the same report on the same day.
• Still pending, as of this guide’s last update: FSSAI’s own detailed guidelines, which would state the exact wording, placement and any exemptions, had not been issued at the time the source article was published. Reporting says they are expected soon, not that they exist yet.¹

Do not read a news report as the regulation’s text. Where FSSAI publishes the order or detailed guidelines, that document is the one to check a listing against; this guide will link it once it is public and will update its dates and claims accordingly, rather than leaving the reporting-based version standing once a fuller primary source exists.

What a listing should show

The checklist below states the three fields named in reporting on the change. It is a reading aid, not a compliance certificate. FSSAI’s own published guidance, once it exists, is the authority on wording and placement.

What a brand should check on its own listings

Whatever FSSAI’s detailed guidelines eventually specify, a brand can start checking today whether its own listings carry the three fields, and where.

1. Open each app (Blinkit, Zepto, Instamart, and any others you sell through) and search for your own products the way a shopper would.
2. For each listing, record whether manufacturing date, expiry date and country of origin appear, and where on the page (product title, description, a separate details panel). A field that is missing is a fact, not an accusation: the app may be mid-rollout.
3. Save a screenshot with the date and the app it came from. If the field is wrong (a country of origin that does not match your own records, for example), that is worth its own dated evidence before you raise it with the platform.
4. Repeat after 1 October 2026 and again after FSSAI’s detailed guidelines land, since a listing built to reporting’s description may need to change again once the binding wording is published.
5. If you sell through a distributor or a reseller rather than listing directly, ask them the same question: which of your SKUs show the three fields today, on which app, and since when. A reseller relationship does not remove the reputational exposure if a shopper sees a wrong or missing date against your brand name.

None of this requires new tooling to start. A spreadsheet with one row per product, per app, per check date is enough for a first pass; the discipline that matters is checking the same products on the same apps repeatedly, not the sophistication of where the results are stored.

Keeping dated evidence of what a listing showed

A listing changes without notice, and a screenshot with no date or app name is hard to use in a conversation with a retailer. The same discipline the pin-code shelf truth guide sets out for price and stock readings applies here: record the app, the pin code if the field varies by store, the exact time, and the page address the record came from.

This guide does not establish that Rewalto can supply manufacturing dates, expiry dates or country of origin. Check the fields on the relevant dataset entry. If the fields you need are missing, describe them to Finder; submitting a request does not guarantee delivery.

How this differs from the other two rules taking effect

Two related but separate rules reach quick-commerce apps around the same period, and this guide is deliberately narrow to the FSSAI disclosure change above. See the 30-day prior-price rule for how an advertised discount must be justified from 1 January 2027, and sponsored-label and ranking transparency for the search and advertising side of the same amendment. Discount depth against MRP, covered in discount depth, is a different, older measurement and is not part of any of the three.

Treating the three as one undifferentiated “quick-commerce compliance wave” makes it harder to track any one of them properly, because each has its own trigger date, its own regulator or notification, and its own evidence a brand would need to defend itself. Keep separate, dated notes for each, and update them independently as guidance for each is published.

Common questions

Notes

1. Source: ZeeBiz, “Quick Commerce Rules From October 1: Apps to show products manufacturing, expiry date & other details”, published 25 September 2026, read and quoted the same day: zeebiz.com. This guide reports what that article states and does not have access to FSSAI’s own order or detailed guidelines, which the article itself says were still pending. This page is not legal advice; check FSSAI’s own published guidance and your own counsel before acting on a compliance deadline. Back to text