Flipkart's Dark Store Expansion Plans Signal Aggressive Growth Strategy

Flipkart Expands Quick Commerce Arm Minutes with Plans to Double Dark Store Count

Walmart-owned Flipkart is set to aggressively expand its quick commerce arm, Minutes, with plans to add 800 dark stores over the current calendar year. This move aims to double the existing count of dark stores, which currently stands at around 750-850.

According to a UBS client note, Flipkart Minutes has been growing rapidly, with the pace of growth slowing down from the initial plans. The quick commerce arm went from launch to about 100 dark stores in nine months and had close to 300 dark stores by April 2025. Initially, Flipkart group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy had planned to open around 800 stores by the end of 2025, but only managed to open around 500-600 dark stores as the company took a more calibrated approach.

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Flipkart's plans to expand Minutes would make it the second-largest in terms of dark store footprint, after Blinkit. Market leader Blinkit, owned by Eternal, has around 2,100 dark stores and has communicated it will open another 900 dark stores by March of 2027. In comparison, Flipkart's arch-rival, Amazon, which operates quick commerce arm Amazon Now in India, has rolled out plans to have 450-500 dark stores. As of today, it has about 330-370 dark stores that would be operational, with another 100-140 dark stores in the pipeline.

Other players in the quick commerce market, such as Swiggy's Instamart and Zepto, have around 1,100-1,200 dark stores each. These predictions come at a time when e-commerce majors like Amazon and Flipkart have both increased focus on quick commerce by moving away from Fresh and Kilos – their larger grocery play – to a more fragmented structure of opening several dark stores, increasing penetration and fulfilling deliveries in 10-15 minutes.

However, analysts were sure that quick commerce adoption is still growing and the market is yet to stabilise. While discounts are reducing, an analyst note from Jefferies said the stickiness across apps is yet to be formed. The note also found that all major quick commerce apps, except Flipkart Minutes, saw a reduction in monthly app downloads, and except for Blinkit, BigBasket, and Zepto, all the other platforms saw a decline in monthly active users (MAUs), meaning customers are yet to become loyal to a certain platform or platforms.