Runaway growth: Instamart now revisits dark-store bet

It paused expansion efforts to improve utilisation, possibly allowing Blinkit to widen its lead

- Sakshi Sadashiv

After a year of steroid-fuelled dark-store expansion to outpace rivals, Instamart is staring at leaner carts. Its orders per dark store per day have fallen 22% over the past nine months, from a peak of 1,260 recorded during the second quarter of 2024-25 to 985 by the first quarter of 2025-26.

Part of the dip could be the ramp-up lag—new stores take months to optimize inventory, layout and demand. However, the quick-commerce player's recent averages falling short suggest deeper structural overcapacity, not just early-stage teething troubles, because mature dark stores in similar models tend to stabilize at higher order volume, warned Nilaya Varma, co-founder of management consulting firm Primus Partners.