Ola’s parent company is planning to establish its dark stores owing to increasing demand for quick delivery services. This will be the second attempt for Ola in the quick commerce business.
Dark stores are small retail warehouses where goods are stored for rapid deliveries, these dark stores will be operated by Ola and robots will be installed in these dark stores to control different operations and to reduce human involvement in the process, as per the report.
“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,” the report cited a source. “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,” it added.
Along with dark stores, Ola is also planning to introduce its own Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for its customers. As per the report, the new initiative will be introduced by CEO Bhavish Aggarwal at the company’s annual Independence Day celebration on 15th August.
As per sources Blinkit, a Zomato-owned quick commerce company is planning to have 2,000 dark stores by the end of 2026 from the 639 in Q1. Also, Zepto is thinking of doubling the total dark store count to 700 by March 2025 compared with 1,000 for Blinkit in the same time. Swiggy’s Instamart is also looking for new dark stores across the country.
“This is another attempt from Ola to ride the quick commerce wave after it launched Ola Dash as an end-to-end quick commerce service and shut it in 2022, There is going to be a lot more demand for warehouses and better management given the demand for fast delivery for a majority of e-commerce segments,” it added.
Previously, Ola acquired Foodpanda in 2017 to diversify the food delivery industry but was unsuccessful and had to shut down the business within two years.
