Flipkart, Amazon accelerate dark store expansion as Minutes logs sharp H2 surge
Flipkart and Amazon are stepping up their quick commerce push, with Flipkart aiming to open 800 dark stores and Amazon on course to reach 300 stores by year-end.
Flipkart's quick commerce platform, Flipkart Minutes, has recorded 16X growth in the second half of the year with 53 million unique transacting customers.
Flipkart Minutes saw strong traction during the festive season, with demand rising nearly 10X in the second half (H2) of the year in categories like jewellery, premium electronics, home decor, and mobiles, compared to H1 of 2025.
Flipkart, a late entrant in the quick commerce business, said it has expanded its services to more than 30 cities in 2025, with a mix of Tier I and II towns.
These developments come as ecommerce giants—Amazon and Flipkart—look to expand quick commerce offerings, as incumbents rack up more funding to expand and retain their market share.
Amazon plans to open as many as 2 dark fulfillment stores every day, with a target to set up 300 dark stores by the end of this year, scaling up its network in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru. In contrast, Flipkart Minutes plans to set up 800 dark stores by the end of the month, according to a report by MoneyControl.
In April, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Group CEO of Flipkart, had shared that the company has opened close to 300 dark stores since its launch in late 2024. Amazon has nearly 100 micro-fulfillment centres before the start of the festive season.
Earlier this week, Swiggy's shareholders cleared its Rs 10,000 crore fundraise, allowing the food delivery and quick commerce player to build its war chest for the hyperlocal turf war.
According to media reports, the Sriharsha Majety-led company's QIP was oversubscribed 4.5 times at a discounted issue price of Rs 375 apiece. The fundraise takes Swiggy's existing cash corpus to Rs 17,000 crore, as against Zomato and Blinkit parent Eternal's corpus of Rs 18,314 crore, as of September quarter.
Other players like Zepto also taking home bigger cheques at larger valuations suggests that investors are looking at the cash runway as a precursor to taking market share. A bigger balance-sheet power allows a player to run longer and deeper promotions, often shaping market behaviour. These trends highlight how the sector has shifted back into expansion mode after a short-lived phase of discipline.
Edited by Suman Singh