No dark stores, no fleets: Shiprocket’s decentralised quick commerce play

Still in the MVP (minimum viable product) phase, the startup’s new service is processing 300,000-400,000 quick commerce deliveries a month across six cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai, through a network of last-mile delivery partners.

The service is available on a separate app called the Shiprocket Quick Delivery App on Android and iOS.

“We are big believers that the next evolution of e-commerce is quick commerce. Not just for grocery or food, but for almost everything a household needs within reach,” said Gautam Kapoor, Co-founder and COO at Shiprocket, who also heads the firm’s quick commerce vertical. “The market is huge, and largely underserved.”

Quick commerce or Q-commerce, promises delivery in under an hour, and Shiprocket’s bet lies not in building out vast fleets or dark stores, but in enabling existing neighborhood sellers to plug into this infrastructure. 

“When Amazon launched one-day delivery, people thought it was unnecessary. Now it’s the norm. Quick commerce is just the next version of that,” Kapoor said.

Unlike large-format fulfillment centers located on city outskirts, Q-commerce fulfillment relies on smaller nodes. “A typical Amazon warehouse is 200,000 to 300,000 square feet. A dark store in quick commerce is only about 2,000 square feet. The challenge is how to make everything available within that limitation,” he explained.

To overcome inventory and reach constraints, Shiprocket isn’t limiting its focus to traditional FMCG categories. New verticals like toys, electronics, and stationery are gaining traction. According to Kapoor, ` is also a category that is likely to break into Q-commerce soon, albeit in a different format.

“Maybe the delivery isn’t 15 minutes, but 30 minutes or one hour. It may not come from a dark store, but from a mall or a high-street shop nearby,” he said.

The model mirrors real-world consumer behaviour. “There’s the neighborhood kirana, then a market a kilometer away, then a mall, then a hypermarket on the outskirts. Shiprocket is trying to empower that middle layer — the shops you might know but can’t always access easily,” he added.

India’s quick commerce market is set to grow by 75–85% in 2025, reaching a GMV of $5 billion, according to TeamLease’s Q-commerce Report: A Staffing Perspective. In 2024 alone, monthly transacting users rose by over 40%, while average monthly orders per customer increased from 4.4 in 2021 to 6, highlighting the rising dependence on fast delivery services.

Rather than compete with players like Blinkit and Zepto head-on in grocery, Shiprocket sees value in empowering small and mid-sized sellers — toy shops, fashion retailers, pharmacies — with delivery infrastructure, demand aggregation, and software tools. 

“I recently moved to Noida and didn’t know where to buy a toy for my daughter’s birthday. I searched online, found a local seller, and he booked an Uber parcel to deliver it. That’s the need we’re solving for — not instant gratification, but fast access to trusted local sellers,” Kapoor said.

Shiprocket’s Q-commerce layer taps into existing delivery networks—Ola, Rapido, and nearly ten others—where it adds a software layer to unify demand. 

“The Shiprocket app sends delivery requests to all providers on the platform. Whoever accepts it first gets the job,” Kapoor said. “We negotiate for the best rates and pass that on to the customer. That’s our value proposition.”

The platform currently enables deliveries in six cities, with further locality-based expansions planned. “We have brands like Licious and Ferns N Petals using us regularly. And then we have 5,000 to 7,000 small businesses— retailers, D2C brands, local shops — that use us one to three times a week, depending on demand.”

While the company hasn’t set explicit FY26 targets, Kapoor said scaling the business 10X to 20X “is not a problem” given the opportunity. “This is a massive market that’s never been serviced properly. Small businesses need help with fulfillment. That’s where we come in.”

Asked whether Shiprocket would consider operating its fleet, Kapoor said the current strategy relies on partners. “We have tied up with everyone from Ola to small fleet owners who operate 200 vehicles in a city. If we see a supply gap, we might step in directly. But right now, it’s about aggregating existing capacity.”

On potential expansion to Tier II and III cities, Kapoor remains cautiously optimistic. “Tier I cities are still growing like crazy. Tier II towns are evolving — some like Chandigarh behave like metros already. But for quick commerce to succeed there, demand density and infrastructure still need to mature.”

Still, Kapoor believes the foundation being laid today will unlock rapid scale tomorrow. “The culture of ‘everything comes to you’ — that’s what will drive this shift. Whether it’s a toy shop or an electronics store, if we can help them deliver faster, customers will keep coming back.”

IPO-bound Shiprocket is backed by prominent investors, including KdT Ventures, McKinsey, Lightrock, Temasek Holdings, Zomato, Tribe Capital as well as Bertelsmann India Investments, Info Edge ventures, and PayPal Ventures. 

It is among the many players trying to get a share of India’s q-commerce market. By early 2025, companies such as Delhivery and DTDC launched sub-two-hour and same-day delivery services for D2C and social-commerce sellers. DTDC began with a dark store in Bengaluru and plans national expansion. Meanwhile, express shippers like Blue Dart and DHL are upgrading for faster fulfillment, and hyperlocal networks. 

Logistics company Shadowfax and ride-hailing platforms Ola, and Uber are building gig-rider fleets to connect local stores with customers.