NATO leaders set to support Trump defense spending target
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Grainger, for the ones who get it done. The dark stores delivering to online shoppers in just 10 minutes. Coming up, we'll look at the impact on other retailers in India. Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Stuart Clarkson in Fort Leanna Byrne. Good morning.

Let's start in Europe, though, where President Trump is in The Hague in the Netherlands for the NATO summit. Most European countries have agreed to up their defence spending to 5% of GDP, which is higher than what the US currently spends. But on every country has signed up and speaking to reporters on his flight to the summit, Mr Trump singled out Spain. They're having a problem with Spain. They're always a problem with Spain. Spain's not agreed, which is very unfair to the rest of them.

Javi López is a member of the European Parliament for Spain's governing Socialist Party and a member of the EU Committee on Security and Defence. What we made during this year is to have a huge increase, like coming from 1.5% to 2%.

This was a decision made by our government and we are ready to work on this direction and to spend more. But the reality is like it's not the same every country. We are not facing the same reality, the same geography, the same history and the same budget.

Next today, quick commerce is big business. This is where you tap an app on your phone to buy something and it turns up at your door in just 10 minutes. In India, the firms offering this are changing shopping habits, but it's creating problems too, including exhausted gig economy workers and struggling family-run stores. Here's the BBC's Davina Gupta on India's 10-minute delivery craze. Hi.

Tripti Garg is expecting her first child and says these instant delivery apps are a lifesaver. I feel like having chips. And this one says it can deliver a bag of chips in just 10 minutes. So should we choose this? The app is showing different brands and there are prices mentioned for each bag of chips at the bottom. Most of them are same. So once you click on the product, it takes you to a page where you have to put in your address.

And then choose between online payment or paying in cash. And it's done. We place the order and now we wait. Ten minutes later, her snack arrives. Thank you, Gaya. It's so convenient. Yeah, it is actually. I'm addicted to these apps. But isn't it expensive, Tripti?

It is a bit, I agree. But, you know, the ease and the convenience is actually far better. India's quick commerce sector is already worth an estimated $6 billion. The current market leaders are food delivery platforms turned instant delivery apps, Zomato and Swiggy. And then there's Zepto, which was found in 2021. Adit Palicha is co-founder of Zepto and explains how the 10-minute model took shape.

you know, fundamentally, you open the app, right? You see a list of 5,000 plus products, right? And it's, you know, well curated. It's a nice, it's a nice user interface. Uh,

But the way that that works is once you open the app, we actually match you to the nearest dark store facility that's in our network. That dark store is essentially, think of it as a micro warehouse that's peppered in dense neighborhoods that just delivers to you quickly. These dark stores are retail outlets that aren't open to the public and exist purely for online deliveries. But critics say the model isn't without risks.

They say the biggest pressure is faced by delivery riders who have to meet tight deadlines. I met a group of them in Delhi, waiting by their bikes in the summer heat. They didn't want to be named, but wanted their voices to be heard.

There's a pressure on the rider to deliver fast. It takes 5-7 minutes for a 2 km delivery. And the pressure to make it fast puts our lives at risk. This line of work is risky. Anything can happen on the road. My family doesn't agree with it, but there's no other way to earn money.

Then there are traditional retailers, known as Khirana stores, who are also feeling the heat. 37-year-old Himanshu Batra runs his family grocery shop in central Delhi. 50% of our sales are affected because it's convenient for the customer to order online.

because they have a vast reach of products. It's not possible for us to provide that range. But Himanshu believes quick commerce is a passing fad and that his business will survive. Sandeepan Chattopadhyay of Zelpmog Design & Tech, who has worked on several online platforms, is also cautious about this quick commerce boom. Any startup today is being...

puts on so much tremendous growth pressure that they are all playing catch up with each other. He says many of these startups are still not profitable and rely heavily on investor funding. It's a mixture of a lot of things. We need a lot of fundamental investors. We have to have more than deep pockets. We have to have deeper patience and more patient capital.

So in the end, even as India's quick commerce sector is in a race to deliver faster and faster, it's clear there still needs to be checks and balances for its workers, investors and consumers to get a fair deal. In Delhi, I'm the BBC's Divina Gupta for Marketplace. Let's do the numbers now.

Oil prices are back up around 1.5% this morning, though they're still down around 16% from the highs on Monday before the ceasefire between Iran and Israel. Reaction, too, from Asian markets with Hong Kong's Hang Seng index at 1.23% at close and the Shanghai Composite Index ending the day at a six-month high. And Tesla sales in Europe were down 45% in the first five months of this year compared with 2024, as despite figures showing a 26% increase in

in the number of EVs bought in Europe. And campaigners protesting against the upcoming lavish wedding of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in Venice have thrown inflatable alligators into some of the Italian city's iconic canals. BBC's Katie Silvers on the story. Campaigners are saying that it was their commitment and their threats, I guess, to block guests that were arriving to a very lavish wedding party by jumping into the canal with inflatable alligators. They are saying...

As a result of that, they have moved the venue to a further away destination and claiming a victory here. So the exact day and venue of the wedding ceremony itself is still confidential, but it is expected to be, quote unquote, the wedding of the century. A $55 million lavish three-day party.

where the who's who, about 200 different guests, are due to fly into Venice for it. And it has attracted a lot of controversy and attention. There have been posters and banners placed all over the city. And as I say, these plans that had existed to disrupt the event, many saying that Venice should be for its residents, not a theme park for the mega wealthy. Well, one of those organizing the process with a group, No Space for Bezos, is schoolteacher Marta Sotorovia.

For people living in Venice, there's no contradiction between mass tourism over tourism on the one hand and rich people coming and believing that because they've got money, they can do whatever they want. Money was already pouring in Venice.

We've got 20 to 30 million people per year. So the issue with Venice is not the money or the visibility that they can bring. The issue here is that this city is losing its inhabitants and it's losing its economic and social fabric.

You know, we are not a Las Vegas landscape. We are not a postcard. There's people living here and we feel that it's a real problem here that a man can be so rich that he can rent a city. Thanks for listening. In the UK, I'm Stuart Clarkson with the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service. Have a great day.

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