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According to a CLSA report, Flipkart Minutes had 627 dark stores across the 10 cities as of August 2026, marginally ahead of Swiggy Instamart’s 615. The report also noted that Flipkart Minutes has moved ahead of Instamart in terms of pincode coverage across these markets.
Blinkit continues to command the largest dark-store network among the platforms covered in the analysis, with 969 stores, followed by Zepto at 828. Flipkart Minutes ranks third with 627 stores, while Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket have 615 and 497 stores, respectively.
Together, these five quick-commerce platforms operate 3,536 dark stores across the 10 cities tracked by CLSA.
Bengaluru Leads Dark-Store Concentration
The analysis covers Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Gurgaon, Lucknow and Ahmedabad. Amazon and JioMart were not included in the calculations.
Bengaluru has the highest number of dark stores among the markets studied, with 735 stores, followed by Delhi at 531 and Hyderabad at 484. Mumbai has 372 stores, while Chennai accounts for 365. Pune has 293 stores, followed by Kolkata with 248, Gurgaon with 225, Lucknow with 146 and Ahmedabad with 137.
Blinkit accounts for approximately 30 percent of the combined dark-store network across the 10 cities and more than 34 percent of the national network, according to the report. The platform has the largest network in six of the 10 cities, while Zepto leads in three of the remaining four markets.
Quick Commerce Pushes Beyond Major Cities
The expansion of quick commerce is increasingly moving beyond India’s largest urban markets. CLSA noted that dark stores are now spread across 477 cities, with established players continuing to add locations in existing markets while newer entrants experiment with smaller cities through limited initial launches.
Flipkart Minutes has particularly accelerated its expansion into Tier III markets. Its presence in these cities has increased 42 times over the past year, with markets such as Ara and Muzaffarpur in Bihar among the locations witnessing expansion.
The widening geographical footprint indicates that quick-commerce companies are increasingly looking beyond established metropolitan markets to identify new demand pools. Dark-store expansion is also becoming an important lever for improving local availability and delivery coverage.
The report also takes a more favourable view of Eternal, the parent company of Blinkit, compared with Swiggy. CLSA has assigned Eternal a target price of Rs 506, implying a 53.5 percent upside over its August 25 closing price of Rs 329.6.
For Swiggy, CLSA has set a target price of Rs 312, representing an 8.7 percent potential upside from its August 25 closing price of Rs 286.9.
The dark-store expansion reflects the intensifying competition in India’s quick-commerce market, where platforms are continuing to invest in fulfilment infrastructure, geographical coverage and delivery networks to capture a larger share of consumers’ increasingly frequent online purchases.
