Flipkart on track to open 800 dark stores by December as quick commerce booms

Mint

23-05-2025

Bengaluru/Delhi: Flipkart Minutes, the quick commerce arm of the Walmart-backed e-commerce giant Flipkart, is experiencing a surge in demand, with order volumes doubling nearly every 45 days. This rapid growth is fuelling optimism for the service's ambitious expansion plans, which aim to increase its network of dark stores to 800 by the end of 2025, doubling from the current 400, the company's top executives told Mint.
Also Read | As Kabeer Biswas jumps to Flipkart, no resolution yet in sight for Dunzo
Currently operating in 17 cities across India, Flipkart Minutes is focusing on deepening its reach within its top-performing urban centres by extending its service to more pin codes.
The firm—which entered quick commerce much later than its peers—will continue expanding aggressively to catch up with its rivals and grab a share of the growing market.
Also Read | Quick medicine delivery: Startups gear up against giants Flipkart and Swiggy
'We'll go where the customer is. We have built everything from the sustainability perspective and we are very committed to [delivering in] 10 minutes as well," Kanchan Mishra, vice-president at Flipkart, said in an interview.
Minutes has helped improve Flipkart's overall customer retention with a larger number of people now transacting on the platform more frequently.
'What we have seen is quick commerce has enabled us to grow our pie in certain categories. We are able to bring customers back more often, and we are able to make our customers buy a much wider set of products from the platform. So it's been adding to the retention of our customer base, adding to the spend per customer on the platform and adding to the transaction per customer on the platform."
According to Mishra, nearly 40% of Flipkart Minutes' users make a repeat purchase every two weeks.
Flipkart launched Minutes in August 2024 in select pockets of Bengaluru, much after its competitors Swiggy Instamart, Zomato-owned Blinkit, and Zepto. Entering late in the game, Flipkart had lots to catch up on—right from setting up dark stores to matching delivery speed.
Quick commerce is projected to grow at over 40% annually through 2030, driven by expansion across categories, geographies, and customer segments, per a report by Bain & Co.
While quick commerce began with grocery, 15–20% of its gross merchandise value now comes from categories such as general merchandise, mobile phones, electronics, and apparel. Over two-thirds of all e-grocery orders and a tenth of overall e-retail dollars are being spent on these platforms.
To be sure, India's e-retail market touched $60 billion in 2024, per March 2025 estimates by Bain & Co. Meanwhile, quick-commerce gross merchandise value touched $6-7 billion in 2024, with over 20 million annual active shoppers.
'The need for speed for our customers is very evident. We have seen that quick commerce has helped bring in customers more often and enable them to buy a much wider set of products from the platform. It has been adding to the retention and spends per customer," Mishra said.
'Quick commerce is all about building on strengths. Building the hyperlocal and daily essentials business are the two the key things to focus on. And this is an extremely execution-heavy business," said Kabeer Biswas, the newly-appointed head of Flipkart Minutes.
Daily essentials account for 90% of Minutes' transactions, while large-ticket items like electronics and beauty and personal care products dominate in terms of order values, Mishra said.
Flipkart's quick commerce arm has also benefited from hyperlocal logistics that is now available in commoditized form in India, helping it move ahead despite making a late start compared to its quick commerce peers, Mishra added.
'With hyperlocal density, yes we have had a late start, but given that it is almost commoditized across the country, we have been able to build decent capacity," Mishra said.
'What we see has been playing is the strength of the platform that powers us. We have seen very strong synergies coming in from our shared supply chain and logistics network, where we share warehouses and the logistics network that powers Flipkart. We have seen very strong early adoption coming in from customers as well," Mishra noted.
Quick commerce—characterized by high cash burn and unsustainable unit economics—typically requires consistent investment. While Flipkart will continue to infuse capital to expand the service, it doesn't seem to be much bothered about cash burn.
'What plays favourably for us is we have a massive base of customers already available to us that makes our cost of customer acquisition very, very efficient. We already have 75% of the supply chain investments deployed from the larger Flipkart business. That makes our journey to increasing our footprint a lot easier on the cost front. We also have a rich technology platform that's built and operating at scale, which makes go-to-market for us easier," Mishra added.
Naturally, competition in quick commerce is heating up, prompting companies to bulk up investments in expanding dark stores and hiring more personnel to keep delivery timelines short. In the third quarter of FY25, Zomato said it will continue to accelerate Blinkit's expansion, burning cash to reach 2,000 dark stores a year ahead of target even as the quick-commerce business pulled down its profit.
Net profit of Zomato (rebranded as Eternal) saw a sharp decline of 78% year-on-year (y-o-y) in January-March quarter to ₹39 crore, largely on account of the accelerated investments in its quick-commerce business Blinkit. Swiggy's net loss widened to ₹1,081 crore from ₹555 crore a year ago.
Established companies such as Zepto, Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart are already sitting on thousands of dark stores. Blinkit crossed the 1,000 dark store milestone early this year. Rival Swiggy added over 300 dark stores for Instamart, its quick commerce service, taking its store count up to 1,021.