We've Doubled Our Order-Per-Day Run Rate in Every 45 Days Since Launch: Kabeer Biswas, Flipkart Minutes

Debuted in August 2024, Flipkart Minutes grabbed the limelight with its variety of offerings and under 10-minutes delivery promise during peak hours. While creating a niche for itself in an already crowded market is a long-haul, the division’s lead Kabeer Biswas, VP, Flipkart Minutes sees the vertical growing exponentially in the quick commerce space through collaborations with brands and leveraging Flipkart's established customer base. He further reveals the plan to touch around 800 dark stores by the end of 2025 from its present around 400 stores. He says Flipkart Minutes’ uniqueness lies in its relevance, reliability, and repeatability. Biswas envisions Flipkart Minutes becoming not just a service platform for instant refill, instead a utility and discovery-led destination.  

What has fundamentally changed in the quick-commerce ecosystem over the last three years?

Over the past three years, quick commerce in India has evolved from being a convenience layer to becoming a core part of how urban India shops. What began as a niche offering for emergency top-ups has now become a preferred mode for everyday essentials, indulgences, and even tech accessories. According to Bain & Company's 2025 report, quick commerce now accounts for over two-thirds of all e-grocery orders in India, reflecting a fundamental shift in consumer expectations around speed, selection, and reliability.

At Flipkart, we have seen this shift firsthand. Consumers today are not just looking for speed; they are looking for trust, value, and a seamless experience. That's where Flipkart Minutes comes in. We believe in enabling the ecosystem it operates in. Minutes is positioned to exponentially grow in the quick commerce space through collaborations with brands and leveraging Flipkart's established customer base.

Flipkart Minutes appears to be scaling steadily, but not aggressively. What's the strategy behind this approach in a market filled with 10-minute delivery promises? 

Flipkart Minutes represents our commitment to serving India's evolving commerce landscape with a focus on value, accessibility, and reliability. We currently operate in 18 cities and are tapping into categories like personal care, packaged food, and electronics. As Indian consumers are evolving, value, speed, and convenience have taken center stage. Keeping these needs at the core, Flipkart Minutes is designed to meet this expectation while remaining grounded in the nuances of Indian consumer behaviour.

Flipkart Minutes is deeply rooted in local relevance and we strongly believe in empowering the ecosystem we operate in. Through Minutes, we aim to further strengthen our ecosystem and expand market access through technology and supply chain innovation. We are focused on sustainable growth, ensuring every dark store we open is profitable, every delivery is reliable, and every customer interaction builds long-term trust.

We have doubled our order-per-day run rate every 45 days since launch, and we are on track to scale to 800 stores by the end of 2025. We are able to achieve this through Flipkart's existing tech capabilities, robust supply chain infrastructure and deep understanding of the consumers' needs, and Ekart's last-mile network.

Is the 10-15-minute delivery still essential, or are customers now more open to slightly longer windows in exchange for better pricing, product availability, or quality?

Speed is important, but it's not the only thing that matters. What customers truly value is reliability and quality - knowing that what they ordered will be of high quality, delivered on time and at the right value. At Flipkart Minutes, we have seen that customers are willing to trade a few extra minutes for better assortment, transparent pricing, and consistent service.

Our average delivery time in metros is under 10 minutes during peak hours, but we don't promise speed at the cost-of-service integrity. Instead, we focus on building trust through curated assortments of quality products with seamless experience across the Flipkart ecosystem.

Flipkart Minutes currently operates in select metros. What are the key requirements or challenges for scaling this model into Tier II and III cities?

Since its launch in August 2024, Flipkart Minutes has scaled rapidly across major metros. It is currently operational in 18 cities - Ahmedabad, Ambala, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi NCR (Gurgaon, Noida, Ghaziabad, Faridabad), Guwahati, Jaipur, Kolkata, Kanpur, Lucknow, Mumbai, Pune, Patna, and Thane, providing convenience to customers across these markets. Flipkart Minutes has been growing at a very fast pace and we have doubled our orders per day (OPD) run rate every 45 days. This scale is enabled by Flipkart's robust end-to-end supply chain and deep-rooted technology capabilities, ensuring consistent and accessible e-commerce experiences.

Scaling into Tier II and III cities requires more than just logistics, it requires deep local understanding. At Flipkart, we have always believed in building for Bharat. That means solving for language barriers, payment preferences, and regional assortment needs. Our expansion strategy is data-led. We identify micro-markets where demand is high and infrastructure readiness aligns with our service promise.

How is Flipkart Minutes integrating with the broader Flipkart retail ecosystem, from warehousing and logistics to payments and last-mile delivery?

Flipkart Minutes is built on Flipkart's core strengths, our logistics network, warehousing capabilities, and technology infrastructure. We leverage Ekart for reliable last-mile delivery, AI-led Smart Fulfilment systems for inventory accuracy, and integrate with Flipkart's app and payments ecosystem to enable a seamless customer experience. Our dark store network functions as micro-fulfilment hubs, allowing us to meet real-time demand efficiently.

We have partnered with several brands and continue to onboard more D2C players to expand our selection and serve more customers. Our model also brings small businesses and Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) into the fold, enabling broader access and more inclusive growth. By tapping into Flipkart's shared infrastructure, we are able to scale faster, lower cost per order, and deliver consistently across categories and cities.

With Zepto and Blinkit investing heavily in dark stores and real-time inventory, what will be Flipkart's competitive edge -- scale, tech, pricing, or something else? 

Flipkart Minutes is backed by Flipkart's platform strengths. We already serve 500 million+ customers, operate a robust logistics network, and have deep expertise in managing complex supply chains. Flipkart Minutes is built on this foundation with a strong consumer-first approach. Our advantage lies in how we stitch these capabilities together, using shared infrastructure, AI-driven fulfilment systems, and integrated dark stores to drive faster profitability and scale. This helps lower the cost per order and improves service integrity as we expand.

What sets Flipkart Minutes apart is not just speed, its relevance, reliability, and repeatability. We are building for everyday use-cases, across categories like personal care, tech accessories, beauty, packaged food, and indulgence. Our goal is to position Flipkart Minutes as both a utility and a discovery-led destination, not just a service for instant refill.

Quick commerce is often under scrutiny for high burn rates. How does Flipkart Minutes plan to balance unit economics with customer growth?

By leveraging Flipkart's existing tech and supply chain infrastructure, Ekart's last-mile delivery network, warehousing, and digital traffic, we are able to reduce fixed costs and accelerate store-level profitability. Given Flipkart already has a strong customer base of 500+ million, our customer acquisition cost also reduces significantly further helping us reduce any constraints on capital deployment. Our focus is on high-frequency, high-margin categories like personal care, impulse tech, and indulgent foods. These drive repeat behaviour and improve unit economics. We are also exploring loyalty constructs like SuperCoins to deepen engagement and retention.

Can you share a sneak peek into your next big priority, whether in product innovation, delivery optimisation, or private label development?

The business is around 10 months old now, and I have been part of the journey for a quarter. We are currently doubling in scale every 45 days and are already halfway to our target of launching 800 dark stores by the end of the year. Our next big priority is to deepen the foundation we have already laid while unlocking more value across our core growth levers. Flipkart is strategically building on its inherent strengths to scale Minutes, and the progress we have made in 10 months is a testament to that. We are working on sharper delivery precision through AI-enabled logistics engines, expanding to T1-T2 markets, and expanding partnerships with youth-first and D2C brands. We are also enhancing the tech backbone to further automate replenishment cycles and scale dark store efficiency.

In your view, is quick commerce a convenience layer, a full-stack retail model, or the future of e-commerce? What's your personal bet?

Quick commerce is not a feature; it's a format and increasingly, a habit. For us, it represents a new front in Flipkart's ongoing commitment to accessibility, value, and trust. It is both a convenience layer and a powerful retail model, enabling discovery-led shopping while solving friction in daily life. We see it evolving into a core pillar of e-commerce, particularly for India's young, digital-first consumers.