Last updated : April 11, 2025 3:41 pm
The Group CEO of the Quick Commerce division of Flipkart, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, is reported to have talked about the expansion plans of Flipkart Minutes at Walmart’s annual Investment Community Meeting.
Flipkart Minutes, Flipkart's quick commerce division, reportedly plans to expand its dark store network to 800 by the end of 2025, according to Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, who has been quoted in news reports.
“We launched this product around nine months back. We launched with just about 100 stores, and we are already close to 300 stores now, ” he is reported to have said.
Flipkart, owned by Walmart, was relatively late to enter the scene. It launched Minutes from Bangalore in August last year. However, it has rapidly expanded to major cities now.
According to a JLL and Miebach Consulting cited by Moneycontrol, the demand for dark stores is being driven by Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities with a requirement of about 24 million sq ft (msf) of space in 2023 in India. The requirement is expected to grow at a steady 12 percent CAGR to 37.6 msf till 2027.
According to analysts cited in reports, Flipkart is likely to would gain from its parent’s experience in China, where it already runs a quick commerce business. In China, the company operates Cloud Depots, similar to dark stores offering deliveries in major cities in 15 to 60 minutes. Reports also say that the company is experimenting with the model in Mexico, where it already has a large network of around 4,000 stores.