Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart Group (file photo)
| Photo Credit:
PAUL NORONHA
Flipkart Minutes, the quick commerce arm of e-commerce major Flipkart, is looking to set up as many as 800 dark stores by the end of 2025, said Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kalyan Krishnamurthy at Walmart’s annual Investment Community Meeting.
“We launched our own quick commerce product nine months back with just about 100 stores, and we are already close to 300 stores now. By the end of this year, we will probably get to 800 stores, that’s the vision we have,” he said.
This comes at a time when Flipkart’s Singapore-based parent entity pumped in as much as ₹3,249 crore (around $382 million) into the marketplace business.
quick competition
The quick commerce competition in India is heating up with Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart also expanding rapidly and adding dark stores.
As of the December quarter (Q3 FY25), Blinkit had 1,007 stores, while Swiggy was operating 705 dark stores. Zepto was operating around 750 stores.
Blinkit is now targeting to reach 2,000 dark stores by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, by the end of March 2025, both Swiggy and Zepto had expressed plans to set up 1,000 and 1,200 stores, respectively.
“The customer segment for this particular product (quick commerce) is very sophisticated, with high expectations. The most important aspect of making this business successful is the supply chain behind it, which has to be scalable, technology-enabled, agile, and reliable,” Krishnamurthy added.
However, like its competitors, Flipkart’s quick commerce efforts will be limited to the top urban markets, where the demand for quicker deliveries is higher.
“For the top 50 cities and the more affluent user base, we will lead with speed, service, convenience, and national brands. The moment you come down to the next customer segment, we lead with selection and value, and make sure speed-related service becomes hygiene,” Krishnamurthy said.
He also added that Flipkart is investing heavily in leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), and making efforts to integrate the technology across all the company’s verticals.
Other than corporate functions, Flipkart has classified its product and engineering verticals into three buckets – end consumer-facing, merchant facing (Flipkart has more than a million merchants listing products on the platform), and supply chain
Flipkart currently has more than 500 million users, with a product catalogue size of more than 200 million products.
Published on April 10, 2025
