'Don't expect quick commerce to slow down': BigBasket's Vipul Parekh says dark stores are already profitable

Time of India

17-07-2025

Bengaluru: 'Don't expect
quick commerce
platforms to slow down… they're going to focus on how large they can be,' said
Vipul Parekh
, Co-founder of
BigBasket
, dismantling the perception that quick commerce is structurally unprofitable. Speaking at the 5th edition of
E-commerce
& Digital Natives Summit 2025, Parekh noted that many of the
dark stores
run by top players, including BigBasket's
BB Now
, Blinkit, and
Instamart
, are already generating profits.
'If you take the top 25% - 50% of stores, they're all profitable today, even though the company overall may not be profitable,' he said.
"The most conservative estimates of quick commerce today are that this will be a 2,50,000 crore or 3,00,000 crore market by 2030, and these are conservative estimates. So, this is a huge retail market opening up. And these kinds of opportunities come once in a lifetime. Therefore, expect significant investment, competition, a multiplayer market, a lot of noise and a lot of narratives. But at the core, if you see a dark store and you see a good performing dark store, they all make money."
Explaining the overall losses, Parekh said, 'Quick commerce platforms are expanding very rapidly… setting up new dark stores, spending significantly on customer acquisition… in the hope that scale will eventually solve for profitability."
Tier 1 drives the quick commerce engine
While many players talk about expanding into smaller cities, Parekh offered a grounded view on market potential. 'Quick commerce is still a tier one model… in tier two, tier three markets… that network is not dense enough.'
He estimates that by 2030, tier 2–4 cities will make up about 20 per cent of the quick commerce market, equivalent in size to 'one Bangalore.'
00:08
Commenting on the future of India's millions of kiranas, Parekh rejected the notion that quick commerce will render them obsolete. Instead, he sees them adapting and even thriving.
'There are multiple things that will happen… the more interesting evolution that I am finding is kiranas are digitising and becoming dark stores,' he said, adding that, in many cases, it may be a better economic opportunity.