Flipkart Minutes to double dark stores to 1,000 by March-April 2026

Flipkart Minutes plans to double its dark stores to 1,000 and expand to 60+ cities by early 2025, intensifying the quick-commerce race amid surging demand and rising competition

Flipkart Minutes, the quick-commerce (q-com) arm of e-commerce major Flipkart, plans to double its dark-store numbers to 1,000 by March-April next year, up from a little over 500 currently. The company also intends to expand its presence from over 30 cities at present to more than 60, said Hemant Badri, senior vice president and head of minutes, Supply Chain, Customer Experience, and ReCommerce at Flipkart Group.

 

To meet the 1,000-store target, the platform aims to open three to four new dark stores each day over the next four months.

 

“We said we will have 800 stores by March. We have already crossed 500 and possibly by March-April we would be in around 1,000 stores. We are already in 30 cities, and would at least double the footprint by that point in time. We will expand cities, and we will expand those bases. We want to be opening anywhere between 3-4 stores on average for the next possibly 120 days,” Badri said, speaking exclusively with Business Standard.

 

The year 2025 is the first full year of operations for the Flipkart’s qcom vertical as it started operations in August 2024.

 

While Minutes is penetrating deeper into metropolitan cities, it’s also planning to expand into Tier-II and Tier-III cities. For instance, in Bangalore, it has closer to 100 stores and in the national capital region of Delhi, it has around 130 stores.

 

The qcom platform recorded 16-time growth in orders in the second half of 2025, compared to the first half of the calendar year. 

 

Elaborating on the customer base, Badri said, “In the second half of the year, we had seen closer to 53-54 million new users shopping on Minutes. We are growing, in terms of orders, anywhere between 40-50 per cent in a 30-45 days window.”

 

Apart from new customers, Badri added that closer to 50-60 per cent of the Flipkart (e-commerce) users also shop on the qcom platform.

 

In its 2025 year-end wrap report, the company said that Gen Z consumers, in the age range of 15 to 25 years, led the platform adoption, followed by the student cohort. Also, more than 600,000 customers placed a repeat order within seven days.

 

For Flipkart Minutes, on an average, 80-85 per cent basket comprises daily essentials including fruits and vegetables, while the remaining 20-25 per cent includes non-grocery categories like electronics.

 

On the regulations side, Badri said the company always ensures full compliance. On the labour codes, he said the company wants to lead the implementation across its operations.

 

“We are actually participating with the right bodies for this. For all the people who work for us, equality, and equity inclusion are our core foundation. So, we are understanding much more details of that, and we will be a hundred percent compliant to the new labor codes.”

 

Similarly, on the aspect of ensuring that the platform doesn’t have any dark patterns built-in, he added, “We have zero tolerance to non-compliance and we keep having a self-disclosure. We are confident that we are compliant on all those fronts and that’s the core ethos and values we drive within the organisation. So, I’m not worried about dark patterns or any of the non-compliances.”

 

Responding to whether the qcom space is on the brink of a shakeout, Badri responded in negative.

 

“I don’t think so. It’s a daily essential business, it has to be led by execution, and exceptional differentiation. And, very clearly if you’re able to win with customers, the rest of the thing will follow is what I think. So, I’m not worried.”

 

Echoing similar thoughts, in a recent conversation with this newspaper, Russ Grandinetti, senior vice president of International Stores at Amazon, said, “I can’t speak for any other companies. I think the fact that our quick commerce service is part of the larger business makes us very confident, and it’s a sustainable service.”

 

The rapid expansion plans of platforms come at a time when the qcom race is heating up. Similar to Flipkart, another e-commerce legacy player, Amazon, which has its instant delivery platform called Amazon Now, recently said it is targeting

to open two dark stores every day, aiming to have 300 stores by the end of this year.

 

In addition, Blinkit, which has set a target to set up 3,000 dark stores by March 2027, currently has 1,816.

 

Swiggy Instamart has a network of 1,102 dark stores across 128 cities and Zepto has over 1,000. Amidst competition, companies like Blinkit, Instamart, and Zepto are also raising funds aggressively.