BigBasket to introduce its 10-min food delivery service throughout India by March 2026

As India’s quick-commerce market accelerates, Tata Group-owned BigBasket is preparing to launch 10-minute food delivery services across the country by the end of fiscal year 2026.

This would be the company’s most aggressive push yet beyond groceries, into a segment increasingly defined by coffee, snacks, and meals delivered in less than 15 minutes.

BigBasket’s new offering, piloted last month in Bengaluru, will expand to 40 dark stores by the end of July. These dark stores which include compact warehouses located in densely populated neighborhoods, are central to BigBasket’s strategy. They enable riders on two-wheelers to deliver curated food items quickly, much like rivals Swiggy’s Snacc, Blinkit’s Bistro, and Zepto Café. Unlike those competitors, however, BigBasket’s menu will remain limited to Tata-affiliated brands, notably Starbucks and Indian Hotels’ gourmet food arm Qmin, with no external restaurant tie-ups planned.

“We are looking to address the current demand and also unlock new consumers,” Vipul Parekh, BigBasket’s co-founder, told Reuters.

Currently, only 5 to 10% of users eligible for the service are combining snack items with their usual grocery baskets. The company expects that figure to increase as more customers grow familiar with the model. The long-term goal is to fold food delivery into the broader online grocery experience BigBasket has spent more than a decade building since its founding in 2011.

To support this expansion, BigBasket plans to ramp up its dark store count from approximately 700 today to between 1,000 and 1,200 by the end of 2025. The move not only supports quicker fulfillment but also helps BigBasket deepen its penetration in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities where it already has a robust presence.

The timing of the launch comes as quick-commerce platforms jostle for both users and unit economics. According to Blume Ventures’ Indus Valley Report, the sector is now the “fastest-growing industry segment ever” in Indian digital commerce. That rapid growth has attracted both incumbents and upstarts, prompting a wave of experimentation from instant grocery baskets to impulse food orders.

While many of these firms continue to burn capital and chase external investors, BigBasket maintains that it is in no rush to raise fresh funds. “One of the advantages we have is, being a part of Tata Group, you have enough internal capital available,” Parekh said, dismissing media speculation of any immediate funding round.

Instead, the company is focused on laying the groundwork for a public listing. BigBasket is targeting an IPO within the next 18 to 24 months, a timeline that aligns with its broader ambitions of moving from category pioneer to category consolidator. The company previously raised capital from investors like Alibaba and CDC Group, before being acquired by Tata Digital in 2021.

While quick-commerce in India was initially centered around instant grocery deliveries, food is now emerging as the next frontier — a shift driven by urban consumer behavior and the availability of well-positioned fulfillment infrastructure.