Flipkart has scaled Minutes, its quick commerce business, to more than 1,000 dark stores across 130 cities as of June-end, with each store processing between 1,000 and 1,100 orders a day. The app is currently being tested with a select group of users. Flipkart is gathering feedback before it decides to scale the rollout further, JM Financial said in a detailed note.
Flipkart Minutes expansion
Until now, Minutes has functioned as a feature embedded within Flipkart’s main e-commerce app. Analysts at JM Financial believe splitting it out into its own app could help the service build a sharper, more independent identity in the minds of consumers.
The timing lines up with Flipkart’s biggest sales event of the year. BBD typically brings a sharp jump in traffic and engagement on the platform. JM Financial expects this to give Flipkart a natural window to push awareness and downloads of the new Minutes app.
Flipkart Minutes standalone app
As per the JM Financial report, the entire thesis rests on how Indian consumers use apps. The usage in India tends to be need-specific, with users mentally linking a particular app to a particular job, according to the report.
Rivals have already made this bet. Blinkit has run as a standalone quick commerce app since inception. Swiggy, too, spun off Instamart into its own app after first trying to sell groceries through its main platform.
The report extended the argument to other categories as well. It pointed to Paytm, MakeMyTrip and Uber, noting that even these multi-service apps see consumer recall stay anchored to their original core offering: payments, travel or rides. As per the report, this pattern partly explains why India’s broader experiment with super-apps has struggled to gain traction.
Flipkart quick commerce strategy
A standalone app does not come free. According to the report, Flipkart is expected to step up marketing and customer-acquisition spending to drive downloads, build repeat usage and establish Minutes as a habitual destination on its own.
The report noted that these near-term costs should be offset over time, provided Flipkart succeeds in making Minutes a distinct consumer habit rather than an add-on within its main app. It added that competition in quick commerce is shifting from a race to expand supply infrastructure toward a fight for consumer mindshare and order frequency.
Execution still the bigger test
According to the report, an app is only one piece of a much larger operational puzzle. Quick commerce, it noted, remains at its core a retail business that depends on sourcing, warehousing, inventory management, logistics and dark store operations working in sync across hundreds of cities and thousands of stock-keeping units.
Early movers in the segment, as per the report, hold an edge in understanding which categories work for quick delivery, reading city-level demand patterns, securing prime real estate and running logistics tech tuned for speed. Late entrants will need to solve all of these problems at once, not just launch a standalone app, the report said.
For now, the report said, more data on how the standalone app performs will be needed before its impact on listed rivals such as Blinkit and Instamart’s parent, Swiggy, becomes clear.