Flipkart may limit its quick commerce expansion to top cities to reduce burn

Time of India

13-05-2025

Walmart-owned
ecommerce
giant Flipkart is limiting the expansion of its
quick commerce
unit,
Flipkart Minutes
, to the top six to eight cities to rein in costs, according to people familiar with the matter.
Flipkart Minutes, which competes with Eternal-owned Blinkit,
Swiggy Instamart
, Zepto, BigBasket's BB Now and Amazon Now, is currently present in 14 cities and runs a network of more than 300 so-called
dark stores
, or mini warehouses. The intent is to scale this up to around 500-550 by October. Flipkart group chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy had said in April that Minutes would have 800 stores by this year-end.
'More than 90 per cent of the quick commerce volumes are generated from the top eight cities and a bulk of this comes from Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru where Flipkart is going deeper with Minutes,' one of the people said.
With this shift, Flipkart joins its Bengaluru-based rival
Swiggy
in taking a relatively cautious approach to expansion from hereon, notwithstanding Eternal's plans to aggressively chase market share even at the cost of short-term profitability.
'...(Flipkart) plans to expand to 500-550 dark stores before its annual 'big billion days' sale. However, it is also under pressure to halve its ongoing cash burn of around USD 40 million (Rs 340-350 crore) a month over the next few quarters in a bid to launch its IPO,' analysts at brokerage firm HSBC Securities wrote in a May 12 research note.
Flipkart did not respond to queries sent by ET.
Last month, Flipkart's board cleared the company's proposal to shift its domicile from Singapore to India, ahead of a planned IPO in 2026. The process, which is underway now, was initiated almost a year after Flipkart raised USD 350 million from Google as part of a USD 1 billion funding round led by
Walmart
.
Quick commerce challenges
Flipkart's tempered quick commerce push comes amid the rapid growth witnessed by the sector over the last one year — particularly when the broader ecommerce segment with a long-tail of categories has seen sluggishness.
A March 2025 joint report by Bain & Company and Flipkart pointed out that India's e-tail gross merchandise value (GMV) growth slowed down to 10-12 per cent in 2024 from over 20 per cent in the previous years on account of macroeconomic consumption stress. In the same period, quarterly gross order value (GOV) for quick commerce players more than doubled, albeit on a smaller base.
Even as Flipkart works to shorten delivery timelines across its broader ecommerce network, a wider expansion of Minutes could result in increased losses — as visible with Blinkit and Instamart, which together added more than 600 dark stores in the January-March quarter.
Both Blinkit and Instamart, whose parents are listed, have a presence in close to 100 cities. They have significantly increased cash burn to undertake this expansion.
While Blinkit, which added 294 dark stores, incurred a capital expenditure of Rs 317 crore during the three-month period ended March 2025, Instamart spent Rs 425 crore in capex to add 316 such micro-warehouses to its network. Blinkit's operating losses for the quarter came in at Rs 178 crore, while for Instamart it was Rs 840 crore.
ET reported on February 15 that the top three quick commerce players – Blinkit, Instamart and Zepto – were collectively burning around Rs 1,300-1,500 crore per month with Zepto accounting for the largest share. Burn rate measures how quickly a company spends its reserves before generating positive cash flow. The funds are typically used for user acquisition and maintaining growth through marketing, discounting and in this case opening new warehouses.
Industry analysts noted that while promoting quick commerce in urban centres requires considerable marketing investments, it is the rapid physical expansion of opening dark stores that strains finances.
'For new players, it's logical to build a sustainable model before expanding to smaller towns. In quick commerce, unless a dark store achieves around 1,000 orders per day — which typically happens in densely populated areas with high-rise buildings — it's hard to break even,' said Abhishek Pathak, internet sector analyst at brokerage firm Motilal Oswal.
'They (Flipkart Minutes) might be focusing on profitable growth, likely in preparation for the IPO. However, capturing market dominance in cities like Mumbai or Delhi is challenging, given the entrenched presence of Zepto, Blinkit and Swiggy,' Pathak added.
To be sure, Flipkart Minutes' plan to scale up to 800 dark stores will be the fastest ever in the quick commerce segment. The company had launched quick commerce operations in August 2024 in Bengaluru in a few pockets. Instamart took over two years to hit 700 dark stores that it achieved in December 2024.
Zepto and Instamart topped the 1,000 dark-store-mark in the January-March quarter, whereas Blinkit had over 1,300 dark stores on its network as of March 31. The Gurgaon-based company plans to have 2,000 such warehouses by December 2025. Amazon Now is also expanding its network to 300 dark stores in Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru and Mumbai by end-2025, ET had reported in March.