Ola Mulls Quick Commerce Foray Again, To Set Up Its Own Dark Stores

At a time when Ola Electric is set to hit the public market, the electric mobility startup’s founder Bhavish Aggarwal has kicked off recharging his decade-old ride-hailing business, Ola Cabs. 

Amid attempts to disrupt the food delivery segment once again with the help of Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC), Ola is now reportedly tapping into quick commerce.

As per an ET report, Ola’s parent entity ANI Technologies is mulling over setting up its dark stores, which would be operated by the company. Robots are also likely to be deployed to reduce human involvement, sources told the publication.

“It’s a dark store as a service where the whole setup will be delivered with significant automation but there will be some people involved,” a source was quoted as saying. “A few of these initiatives will be displayed as part of Ola’s future roadmap for the next year at a time when the ride-hailing business has plateaued.”

The people operating the dark stores might deploy Ola Electric two-wheelers, as per the report. 

However, an ONDC seller, an offline brand or any other business would reportedly be able to use the dark stores.

Ola reportedly also plans to launch its own Unified Payments Interface (UPI) offering for consumers. 

Aggarwal is likely to unveil these initiatives at its annual Independence Day event on August 15.

Ola was not immediately available to respond to Inc42’s request for a comment on the development.

It is pertinent to note that Ola had stepped into the quick commerce business, just like food delivery, earlier. However, its quick commerce initiative Ola Dash saw a premature death in 2022.

In a market currently dominated by Zomato’s Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy’s Instamart. Flipkart also recently forayed into the quick commerce segment.

Blinkit recently announced its plans to open 2,000 dark stores by the end of 2026, which stood at 639 in the June quarter of FY25. Meanwhile, Zepto is doubling its total dark store count to 700 by March 2025.

Brokerage Bernstein said in a research report last month that while Reliance and Dmart constitute about 85% of modern retail revenue share, their penetration within the top 10 cities, including Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata, is limited.  These markets are targeted by quick commerce platforms, which leaves a large headroom for key players like Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, and Zepto to expand further.