Flipkart Minutes quadruples business as quick-commerce battle intensifies

Flipkart Minutes, the quick-commerce arm of e-commerce giant Flipkart, has quadrupled its business over the past year as it marks two years since its launch in August 2024. The service now operates nearly 1,200 micro-fulfilment centres across more than 150 cities, highlighting the rapid expansion of on-demand delivery in one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets. The expansion comes ahead of Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sale in October, as the company faces intensifying competition from quick-commerce rivals including Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart and Amazon Now.

The platform said it has created more than 400,000 direct and indirect jobs since its launch. About 60 per cent of customers who shop on Flipkart Minutes return to the service, a sign of the growing consumer adoption of quick commerce in India.

“We are excited by the journey. By year end, we look forward to about 1,500 micro-fulfillment centres,” Kunal Gupta, senior vice president and head of Flipkart Minutes, told Business Standard. “Our larger goal is to reach the whole of Bharat.”

Tier 2-plus markets are emerging as an important driver of this growth, with the customer base growing nearly 25 times year-on-year across cities such as Ambala, Barabanki, Bhagalpur, Durgapur, Kanpur, Roorkee, Siliguri, Salem and Tiruppur. Demand in these markets is also extending beyond daily essentials. There is a strong uptake of products such as Korean noodles, sauces and ready-to-eat meals, alongside premium skincare and personal care categories.

Gen Z has emerged as the fastest-growing customer cohort on Flipkart Minutes, with the customer base growing nearly five times year-on-year in the past 12 months. Gen Z drives over 45 per cent of orders across categories such as beauty, electronics, gaming, wearables, fragrance, health and nutrition, and grooming, while accounting for one in three gourmet orders on the platform. The data points to a generation using quick commerce for a much wider range of products, from everyday essentials to premium and aspirational categories.

“Gen Z is bringing new categories and new shopping occasions to the platform,” said Gupta. “We have an opportunity to make this experience available to more consumers across the country, while creating new opportunities for brands, farmers and local businesses to reach customers.”

Beyond daily essentials and fruits and vegetables, premium and aspirational categories are also seeing strong growth on Flipkart Minutes. Gourmet and specialty grocery, launched within the past year, has grown eight times, with demand for cold-pressed oils, imported cheeses, international avocado varieties and Korean ready-to-eat meals. Men’s grooming has grown nearly sixfold year-on-year, while pet food has grown five times, reflecting the expanding range of products customers are choosing to buy through quick commerce.

The platform’s biggest single order to date was worth ₹6 lakh and included five smartphones, illustrating how quickly quick commerce is expanding beyond everyday essentials.

Since August 2024, Flipkart Minutes has built a partner ecosystem of close to 500 direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, giving them access to hyperlocal demand and new customer segments. Through partnerships with Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), the platform has also connected thousands of farmers directly to consumers, helping them reach new markets and improve price realisation.

Flipkart Minutes said it is also building a more sustainable delivery network, with a growing share of last-mile deliveries now using electric vehicles and battery-swapping infrastructure across micro-fulfilment centres. The platform has also introduced lighter compostable and biodegradable packaging across key fruits and vegetables categories, reducing the use of virgin plastic.

The new developments at Flipkart Minutes highlight the intensifying battle for scale in the country’s rapidly expanding instant-delivery market. According to a recent CLSA report, Blinkit accounted for close to 30 per cent of dark stores across the country’s top 10 cities and more than 34 per cent nationally and had the leading store count in six of them, with Zepto leading in three of the remaining four. Blinkit’s presence in more than 180 cities, CLSA said, positioned it to capture an outsized share as adoption spreads beyond India’s largest metros.

The quick-commerce footprint has expanded to 477 cities nationally, according to CLSA’s tracking, with the top 10 cities alone accounting for 3,536 dark stores across the five players the brokerage monitors: Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, Flipkart Minutes and BigBasket.

Within the top 10 cities, the report said Flipkart Minutes had already surpassed Swiggy Instamart in both dark store count and PIN code coverage. Flipkart Minutes counted 627 dark stores in the top 10 cities, compared with Swiggy Instamart’s 615, CLSA’s data showed, while BigBasket trailed the group with 497.