Flipkart Minutes overtakes Instamart in dark stores across top cities

Mumbai: Flipkart Minutes has overtaken Swiggy Instamart in the number of dark stores across India’s top 10 cities, less than two years after entering the quick-commerce market, according to a CLSA report.

Minutes had 627 dark stores across the 10 cities as of August, compared with 615 for Instamart. Flipkart has also moved ahead of Instamart in pincode coverage across these markets, the brokerage said.

Blinkit continues to lead the segment with 969 dark stores, followed by Zepto with 828 and BigBasket with 497. CLSA’s mapping excludes Amazon and JioMart.

The dark-store count is primarily a measure of a company’s fulfilment footprint and does not directly indicate market share. However, Flipkart’s rapid expansion is notable given that Minutes entered the segment in August 2024, several years after Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart began building their networks.

Since its launch, Minutes has expanded beyond India’s major metros into smaller cities. In June, Flipkart said the service had crossed 1,000 micro-fulfilment centres across more than 130 cities and 8,000-plus pincodes.

The company said orders had increased fivefold year-on-year, while Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets recorded 42-fold growth. Flipkart had earlier said it was adding more than 100 stores a month and was targeting 1,500 dark stores by the end of 2026.

CLSA’s latest mapping reflects this push into smaller markets. The brokerage said Flipkart Minutes had increased its presence in Tier-III cities 42 times over the past year, including markets such as Ara and Muzaffarpur in Bihar.

The expansion gives Flipkart a growing physical network to complement its established e-commerce customer base and broader supply-chain infrastructure.

The bigger challenge for Flipkart will be converting its expanding footprint into sustainable business growth. In quick commerce, store numbers alone do not determine competitiveness. Order density, customer frequency, assortment, average order value and fulfilment costs are equally important.

Minutes is also narrowing the gap with Instamart in daily order volumes. Moneycontrol had earlier reported that Minutes was handling more than 1 million orders a day, compared with around 1.3-1.45 million for Instamart.

That puts Flipkart within striking distance of Instamart on another key measure of scale, although Blinkit and Zepto continue to operate at a higher level.

The competitive landscape is also shifting as quick commerce expands beyond the metros that initially drove its growth. Flipkart’s aggressive push into smaller cities could help Minutes tap a broader customer base as adoption spreads.

For now, the dark-store race shows that Flipkart has closed the physical-network gap faster than expected. The next test will be whether those stores can generate enough orders and repeat customers to make that rapid expansion pay off.