Flipkart’s quick-commerce arm reaches 627 dark stores across India’s top 10 cities, narrowing the gap with established rivals despite entering the market later
Flipkart Minutes has overtaken Swiggy Instamart in dark-store presence across India’s top 10 cities, marking a rapid expansion for the quick-commerce business less than two years after it entered the market.
Minutes operated 627 dark stores across these cities in August, marginally ahead of Instamart’s 615, according to a CLSA report. Flipkart has also surpassed Instamart in pincode coverage across the 10 markets, indicating the pace at which the company has expanded its delivery network.
Dark-store numbers do not necessarily translate directly into market share or business performance. However, the latest figures highlight the speed of Flipkart’s network expansion, particularly given that Instamart entered quick commerce around four years before Minutes.
Blinkit Maintains Lead
Blinkit continues to have the largest dark-store network among the companies tracked by CLSA, with 969 stores across the 10 cities. Zepto followed with 828, while BigBasket had 497. The brokerage’s analysis did not cover Amazon and JioMart.
Flipkart launched Minutes in August 2024, entering a market where its major rivals had already established extensive fulfilment infrastructure and built sizeable customer bases. The company has since expanded rapidly, extending the service from large metropolitan markets to smaller cities.
The scale of this expansion became clearer in June when Flipkart said Minutes had surpassed 1,000 micro-fulfilment centres across more than 130 cities and was serving over 8,000 pincodes. The company also reported a fivefold increase in orders over the previous year, while order growth in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities stood at 42 times.
CLSA’s city-level assessment similarly points to a sharp increase in Minutes’ presence outside the largest urban markets. According to the brokerage, the company expanded its Tier-III city footprint 42-fold over the past year, with markets including Ara and Muzaffarpur in Bihar forming part of that expansion.
Orders Remain Key Test
The larger question for Flipkart now is whether the rapidly expanded network can translate into stronger business performance. In quick commerce, store numbers alone are not sufficient to determine the strength of a business. Order frequency, density, basket sizes, product availability and fulfilment expenses all play a role in determining unit economics.
Minutes also has the potential to use Flipkart’s existing ecommerce customer base to drive adoption. Its access to the parent company’s wider supply-chain infrastructure could provide another advantage as the quick-commerce network expands.
The gap with Instamart appears to be narrowing on order volumes too. Moneycontrol reported earlier that Minutes was processing more than 1 million orders a day, against an estimated 1.3 million to 1.45 million orders for Instamart.
While Blinkit and Zepto continue to operate at a higher scale, the order figures put Minutes within relatively close range of Instamart, strengthening Flipkart’s position among the leading players in the segment.
The expansion into smaller cities could prove particularly important for Minutes. Quick commerce, which initially concentrated heavily on metros, is increasingly moving into tier 2 and 3 markets. A broader presence could allow Flipkart to tap new customer pools while increasing the potential market for rapid-delivery services.
For Minutes, the next stage will therefore be less about adding stores and more about making the existing network commercially productive. Higher order volumes, stronger repeat usage and improved unit economics will determine whether Flipkart can convert its rapid expansion into a sustainable competitive advantage in India’s quick-commerce market.
