Ola Cabs parent firm ANI Technologies plans to set up its own dark stores amid rising demand for rapid deliveries, said these people. Dark stores are small neighbourhood warehouses that stock products delivered by these services.
These will be operated by Ola, people briefed on the matter said, adding that robots will be deployed to reduce human involvement. The company also plans to launch its own Unified Payments Interface (UPI) offering for consumers, said the people cited. Aggarwal is likely to unveil these initiatives at its annual Independence Day event on August 15. However, these plans may undergo changes.
“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,” said one of the persons. “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.”
Those operating the dark stores may also deploy Ola electric two wheelers, depending on the arrangement, said another person. “But an ONDC seller, an offline brand or any other business can use this.”
ONDC is the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce platform.
Zomato-owned quick commerce company Blinkit has said it plans to have 2,000 dark stores by the end of 2026 from the 639 in the June quarter. Zepto is doubling total dark store count to 700 by March 2025 compared with 1,000 for Blinkit for the same timeline. Swiggy Instamart is looking for new dark stores across the country too.
“This is another attempt from Ola to ride the quick commerce wave after it had launched Ola Dash on as an end-to-end quick commerce service and shut it in 2022,” another person aware of the matter said. “There is going to be a lot more demand for warehouses and better management given the demand for fast delivery for a majority of ecommerce segments.”
Technology can help dark store management but it’s an operations-heavy business, said one of the persons cited. It’s not clear if Ola has already run a pilot.
Ola didn’t respond to queries.
The plan is linked to the potential IPO of the ride-hailing business.
“Ola Cabs is very mature and, in fact, we had planned to go public in 2021 and the market turned. It didn’t need any capital per se. Hence, we decided we'll do it later,” Bhavish Aggarwal told ET in an interview on July 29, adding that whenever the company is ready he will take it public.
Experiments galore
Over the years, Ola has unsuccessfully explored grocery and food deliveries as part of its expansion plans. It had acquired Foodpanda in 2017 to diversify into food delivery but shut it around two years later.
With the introduction of dark stories, the company is entering an intensely competitive quick commerce market that has cash-rich players like Zepto and Blinkit.
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