Flipkart has ‘Dark Stores’ plan for Big Billion Day sale this festive season

Flipkart reportedly plans to go all out to take on quick commerce players Zomato’s Blinkint, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart and Tata Group-owned BBNow. According to a report in Economic Times, Walmart-owned Flipkart plans to open nearly 100 Dark Stores across top cities ahead of its Big Billion Days sale. The move is aimed at intensifying the battle over quick commerce, according to people with knowledge of the matter, as reported by ET.
For those unaware, Dark Stores are mini warehouses from where deliveries are made by quick commerce companies.Flipkart Minutes will reportedly start with vegetables, fruits, grocery and electronics, among other products.
The Walmart–owned e-tailer plans to launch Flipkart Minutes to enter the fast delivery segment. Flipkart Minutes is currently visible to select users in certain pincodes. “It should be launched in a couple of weeks now,” a person aware of the matter reportedly said. “Given the way the market and consumer preferences have evolved, the service will first be stabilised in certain pockets, and then be scaled…”
The person quoted earlier reportedly added that the reason Flipkart is aiming to have around 100 such dark stores ready is to be able to test them with all demand scenarios by the time festive season starts.

Flipkart gets $350 million from Google

Recently at an investors conference in London, John David Rainey, chief financial officer, of Flipkart parent Walmart said that Flipkart and payments services provider PhonePe are “on their path to profitability”. In late 2022, PhonePe separated from the Flipkart Group and moved domicile back to India from Singapore.
Rainey said that Flipkart’s losses in the ecommerce segment have been improving, adding that this “gives us a lot of confidence in what the overall financial profile of this business looks like a few years from now”.
During its latest quarterly analyst call in May, Walmart executives had said that they were evaluating the right time to take Flipkart public. At the time, Rainey had said Flipkart had seen double-digit growth for the quarter ended April 30.
In June, Flipkart closed a funding round of about $1 billion that included $350 million from Alphabet-controlled Google, at a $35-36 billion valuation.