India’s quick-commerce market is seeing a sharper battle for physical reach, with Flipkart Minutes expanding its network rapidly across the country’s biggest urban markets.
Flipkart Minutes had 627 dark stores across India’s top 10 cities as of August 2026, moving ahead of Swiggy Instamart’s 615, according to a CLSA report. Flipkart Minutes has also surpassed Instamart in pincode coverage across these cities.
Blinkit continues to lead with 969 dark stores, followed by Zepto with 828, Flipkart Minutes with 627, Swiggy Instamart with 615 and BigBasket with 497. Together, the 5 platforms operate 3,536 dark stores across the 10 cities tracked by CLSA.
The cities covered in the report are Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Gurgaon, Lucknow and Ahmedabad. Amazon and JioMart were excluded from the calculations.
Bengaluru has the largest network with 735 stores, followed by Delhi with 531 and Hyderabad with 484. Mumbai has 372, while Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Gurgaon, Lucknow and Ahmedabad have 365, 293, 248, 225, 146 and 137 stores, respectively.
Blinkit accounts for around 30% of dark stores across the top 10 cities and more than 34% nationally. It has the highest store count in 6 of the 10 cities, while Zepto leads in 3 of the remaining 4 cities.
Quick commerce is also expanding beyond major urban centres, with dark stores now present across 477 cities. While established players continue to add stores in existing markets, newer entrants are testing demand in smaller cities with limited networks before scaling further.
Flipkart Minutes has increased its presence in Tier III cities 42 times over the past year, including locations such as Ara and Muzaffarpur in Bihar.
CLSA remains more positive on Eternal, the parent company of Blinkit, than Swiggy. It has set a target price of Rs 506 for Eternal, 53.5% above its August 25 closing price of Rs 329.6. For Swiggy, CLSA has set a target of Rs 312, which is 8.7% above its closing price of Rs 286.9.
The latest numbers highlight the intensifying competition in quick commerce. Blinkit continues to hold the lead, but Flipkart Minutes’ move ahead of Instamart shows how quickly the dark-store landscape is changing as platforms expand into existing and new markets.
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