Flipkart Unveils 'Minutes That Move India', A Report Unpacking What, When, and Why India Orders Fast
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], August 18: Indian consumers are embracing instant gratification at a remarkable pace. Flipkart Minutes, launched just a year ago, has swiftly expanded into 19 cities and more than 2,900 pincodes, delivering everything from tech to tomatoes. With our first-ever annual report, Minutes That Move India, Flipkart decodes what, when, and why India orders in the moment. Through significant data-led insights, Flipkart Minutes provides deep insights into how India shops today, capturing evolving preferences, shifting behaviours, and fascinating consumer quirks.
Celebrating one year of Flipkart Minutes, these insights reveal not only what India buys, but why consumers choose instant delivery, how their buying decisions shift through the day, and what defines consumer mood-driven commerce across key cities.
Onions over iPhones? India's Top Quick-Commerce Hero Will Surprise You
In a twist that defines modern Indian consumerism, onions became the unexpected quick-commerce favourite, with over a million orders placed this year. While everyday essentials dominated overall, consumers also ordered enough milk via Flipkart Minutes to fill six Olympic-sized swimming pools and sold bananas, enough to power an army of minions. Notably, indulgences weren't forgotten: consumers also ordered a staggering 12 million scoops of ice cream, while Maggi noodles continued to comfort Indian consumers with a steady average of 4 packets ordered every minute throughout the year.
India's Most Bizarre Instant Commerce Cart Goes TO....
India's quick-commerce carts showed eclectic, unexpected behaviours, with the most unusual combination being aloo bhujia, two gold coins, and a mouth freshener, ordered simultaneously.
Quick-Commerce Superfan Alert: Shocking Total Orders in Minutes
Consumer loyalty reached extraordinary levels: a consumer placed an impressive 886 orders in one year alone, while another consumer placed the highest single-order value, hitting INR 1.85 lacs. These data points reflect how Flipkart Minutes is deeply embedded in consumer lifestyles, accommodating diverse, even whimsical, purchase motivations.
Faster Than Your Morning Tea: Flipkart's Fastest Delivery at 3 Minutes 21 Seconds!
Flipkart Minutes recorded its fastest-ever delivery, completed in just 3 minutes and 21 seconds in Bengaluru's HSR Layout, highlighting consumer expectations for instant fulfilment. Further insights reveal clear behavioural patterns: peak quick-commerce orders occurred between 7 AM - 8 AM for morning necessities, with another surge in purchases, such as desserts and snacks. Younger consumers, particularly from cities like Pune, Patna and Bangalore, were the most active instant shoppers, highlighting convenience-driven consumption patterns.
He Came. He Queued. He got it in 10 Minutes.
A man standing in queue for over five hours outside Mumbai's Apple Store in Band-Kurla Complex decided to place the order on the Flipkart Minutes app and got his iPhone 16 delivered in just 10 minutes, before the queue had even moved. Last year, while hundreds queued for hours to get their hands on the newly launched iPhone 16, Flipkart Minutes showed how quick commerce is meeting consumer demand for speed and convenience.
India's Quick Commerce Capitals and Their Shopping Signatures
Every city has its own unique characteristics and Flipkart Minutes is here to serve the demand for each:
* Fastest Delivery Champs: Lucknow and Jaipur recorded the fastest average delivery times in India
* The Sweet Tooth Capital: Kolkata was observed as India's dessert capital on Flipkart Minutes, with high-frequency orders for chocolates, cookies, and ice cream
* The Last-Minute Glow-Up: Guwahati showed high demand in beauty and personal care, pointing to a shift in how grooming products are consumed, instantly and often
* Pet-Friendly Headquarters: Mumbai leads in pet food orders, reflecting a highly engaged base of pet-first households
* Gadget Central: Bengaluru features the most late-night orders and high-speed tech purchases, especially wearables and audio products
Midnight Ice Cream, Anyone? India's Latest Shopping Craving Hits at 2:58 AM
Late-night shopping revealed intriguing consumer behaviours, including the most notable late-night order: an ice cream order placed precisely at 2:58 AM in Delhi, underscoring India's growing appetite for spontaneous comfort shopping at unusual hours. Furthermore, tech products, especially mobile chargers, power banks, and cables, dominated late-night orders, underscoring India's persistent digital dependency. Adding a quirky twist, India's well-known "breakup survival kit" comprising ice cream, chips, and tissues was ordered over a hundred times, revealing emotional motivations behind late-night shopping.
India Instantly Ordered 4X more Chocolates Last Minute on Valentine's Day!
Traditional festivals and celebrations increasingly embrace quick-commerce convenience. On Valentine's Day alone, orders for chocolates rose by 4X as compared to other days, emphasizing quick-commerce as the reliable solution for last-minute romantic gestures. Diwali orders spiked for festive essentials such as diyas, fairy lights and rangoli while New Year's Eve witnessed a marked uptick in chips and namkeen orders, clearly reflecting shifting consumer preferences for spontaneous celebrations.
One in Five Orders Were Rainy-Day Essentials This June: Consumers Shop by the Forecast
This year, Flipkart Minutes recorded a sharp rise in demand for season-specific essentials, reaffirming consumer trust in rapid delivery for monsoon-driven needs. Flipkart Minutes offers over 1,000 monsoon-related products on the platform, out of which 90%, including umbrellas, raincoats, mop sets, insect killers, power banks, and torches, were sold in June 2025. One in every five orders placed on Flipkart Minutes in June included a monsoon-related product.
During the summer season, the top 5 summer products were curd/yoghurt, aerated drinks, ice creams, buttermilk, and fruit drinks, all saw strong spikes in afternoon and evening orders. Metro cities led summer demand, with Bangalore on top, followed by Delhi and Mumbai, and average delivery times of under 10 minutes during peak hours (1 PM - 3 PM).
How Personalisation has become India's Quick-Commerce Obsession
Personalisation emerged as a key trend, with categories like greeting cards growing by over 60X, wallet-and-belt combos by more than 7.5X, and wall photo frames by nearly 28X across topical occasions such as Father's Day, Mother's Day, and so on. Whereas product categories such as smart gadgets, grooming essentials, and coffee mugs also saw increased traction on the platform. Personal care products spiked this summer as well, with face washes, soaps, lotions, anti-tan, and after-sun products growing 1.6X. With the rise of portable tech, demand for accessories like chargers and earphones has steadily increased since the launch of Minutes in August 2024.
Flipkart remains committed to building a technology-enabled supply chain that aligns with the changing needs of Indian consumers. The insights emerging from Flipkart Minutes reinforce the growing demand for precision, personalisation, and presence in the moment. As shopping behaviours evolve, Flipkart's differentiated fulfilment approach across hyperlocal, same-day and next-day models continues to deliver with speed, relevance and scale.
From essential groceries to indulgent treats and emergency tech, Flipkart Minutes exemplifies the company's mission to make every shopping experience timely, intuitive, and truly customer-first.
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