India’s quick commerce market is booming, with demand more than doubling for some players. But the fast-delivery push by Flipkart and Amazon is raising the stakes in an already crowded space where profitability remains under pressure.

Flipkart, one of India’s largest e-commerce players entered quick commerce later than local rivals such as Blinkit, Swiggy, and Zepto. But it has now crossed more than 800 dark stores (distribution centers for online shopping) this week, TechCrunch has learned, and is looking to double that by the end of 2026, according to UBS.

The expansion comes as India’s quick commerce sector enters a more intense phase of competition. The strain is reflected in recent developments, including the departure of a co-founder at Swiggy this week, as companies reassess strategy amid rising competition and costs.

The Walmart-owned company debuted in quick commerce with Flipkart Minutes in August 2024, offering deliveries across categories in as little as 10 minutes. Since then, the sector has expanded rapidly. More than 6,000 dark stores are now in operation, leading to significant overlap among players in major cities and intensifying competition, Bernstein said in a report earlier this week.

Beyond major cities

Flipkart’s network in India remains smaller than that of market leader Blinkit, which has over 2,200 dark stores, according to Bernstein. However, Flipkart is betting on expanding beyond major cities to drive growth. This is unlike Blinkit, which plans to scale to 3,000 dark stores by 2027 while focusing on its top 10 cities.

“Flipkart has this Walmart DNA,” said Satish Meena, founder of Gurugram-based consumer insights firm Datum Intelligence. “Walmart’s DNA is always about expanding the total addressable opportunity to dominate by expanding the market.”

Flipkart is already seeing traction beyond major cities, with 25–30% of its quick commerce orders now coming from small towns, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Orders per dark store have also grown about 25% month-on-month, the person said.

However, growth in quick commerce remains concentrated in larger cities. Most demand, Bernstein said, continues to be driven by big cities, where higher population density supports faster deliveries and better utilization of dark stores, even as expansion into smaller towns gathers pace.

That dynamic also underpins profitability. The top eight cities in India account for over 3,800 dark stores operated by the five largest players, with about 3,600 of them having the potential to be profitable, according to Bernstein.

“Metro markets obviously are better in return ratios, better in profitability because of higher throughput,” said Karan Taurani, executive vice president at Elara Capital, a London-headquartered investment bank and brokerage firm. “This business is all about higher throughput, and for now, that is coming largely from metro markets.”

Still, some analysts see a longer-term opportunity beyond major cities. “Non-metros (small towns) can give a surge if companies expand beyond groceries and offer a wider range of items at faster speeds,” said Datum’s Satish Meena. “Flipkart is betting on that.”

Nevertheless, scaling beyond big cities will take time. Quick commerce is currently viable in about 125 cities, with dark stores typically taking six to 12 months to reach maturity and profitability, said Aditya Soman, a senior research analyst at CLSA, a Hong Kong-based brokerage. Many of the newer stores in smaller towns are still in the ramp-up phase, he added.

Amazon, which entered India’s quick commerce market in late 2024 shortly after Flipkart’s debut, is also ramping up its presence. The e-commerce giant has rolled out around 450–500 dark stores so far, with about 330–370 currently operational, according to UBS, as it looks to tap into growing demand for faster deliveries.

Pressure mounting on incumbents

Flipkart is not just relying on dark-store expansion to compete but also aggressive pricing. The company is offering some of the highest discounts in the segment — around 23–24% across categories, based on a sample basket analyzed by Jefferies last month — as it looks to attract users in a market where price and convenience remain key drivers of demand.

The pressure from such strategies seems to be working. Brokerage firm JM Financial recently warned that Swiggy’s quick commerce business is caught in a “growth-versus-profitability deadlock” and risks destroying shareholder value, adding that a takeover by a larger, better-capitalized player may be the best outcome for investors.

Shares of Eternal, which owns Blinkit, are down about 15% so far this year, while Swiggy has fallen over 29%, even as Zepto is preparing to go public on Indian stock exchanges later this year.

The entry and expansion of large players such as Flipkart and Amazon are reshaping the competitive landscape. “Quick commerce is no longer in a startup phase — it has become a big players’ game,” said Ankur Bisen, a senior partner at retail consultancy Technopak Advisors.

He added that the sector’s economics and limited differentiation could eventually drive consolidation, as companies compete for the same set of customers in a discount-heavy market.

Amazon, Flipkart, and Swiggy did not respond to requests for comment. Eternal declined to comment, while Zepto said it could not comment due to a silent period following its IPO filing.

While it’s not unusual for networks to promote new shows by releasing full episodes on YouTube, AMC is doing something a bit different for its Silicon Valley-focused comedy “The Audacity.”

The show’s premiere will be available on TikTok, starting on Sunday morning. It will be split into 21 segments, each lasting about three minutes, according to Deadline. The segments will be numbered, allowing users to watch the premiere in its entirety if they choose.

This could be a smart way to build buzz among younger viewers for a show that AMC’s chief marketing officer described as the network biggest launch of the year. Or it might just be an odd attempt to recreate Quibi.

Created by Jonathan Glatzer and starring Billy Magnussen and Sarah Goldberg, “The Audacity” doesn’t depict real companies or executives, but it aims to provide a darkly comedic look at many issues created by today’s technology.

And if you don’t want to watch in three-minute segments, you can catch the full premiere on AMC and its streaming service AMC+. It will also stream simultaneously on Samsung’s free service Samsung TV Plus.

Cyberattacks rarely come out of nowhere—threat actors often leave behind signals long before an intrusion begins.

On Thursday, April 30, 2026 at 2:00 PM ET, BleepingComputer will host a live webinar titled “From noise to signal: What threat actors are targeting next” with Tammy Harper, Threat Intelligence Researcher at RansomLook.

The webinar explores how security teams can monitor early warning signs across underground communities and translate them into actionable defense.

We will examine how threat actors use dark web forums, Telegram channels, and access broker marketplaces to coordinate attacks, share vulnerabilities, and advertise compromised access, often revealing their intentions weeks before an attack is launched.

Flare Systems, a threat intelligence firm specializing in monitoring external threat surfaces, helps organizations detect these early signals across the dark web and other hidden channels. By providing visibility into attacker behavior and emerging threats, Flare enables security teams to move from reactive defense to proactive risk reduction.

In this session, attendees will learn how to identify meaningful signals within online “chatter,” track evolving adversary tactics, and turn intelligence into prioritized defensive actions before attackers gain a foothold.

Threat actors don’t operate in silence

From vulnerability discussions and leaked credentials to access broker listings and Telegram coordination, attackers frequently communicate and prepare in ways that can be observed.

However, these signals are often fragmented, noisy, and difficult to interpret without the right approach.

This webinar will explore how to cut through that noise, identify patterns, and understand what truly indicates an impending attack versus background activity.

The upcoming webinar will cover:

• How to monitor underground forums, dark web sites, and Telegram channels for early attack signals
• How to identify shifts in attacker tactics and priorities
• How to translate threat intelligence into defensive priorities
• How to proactively reduce risk before intrusions begin

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to move from reactive defense to proactive security strategy.

➡ Register now to secure your spot!

An experienced hacking group has claimed to have infiltrated Rockstar Games‘ cloud servers, while the game publisher has confirmed that there was a “third-party data breach.” ShinyHunters, a hacker group that’s been linked to data breaches targeting Microsoft, Google, Ticketmaster and others, posted a message on its website with a final warning to Rockstar to “pay or leak.” The hack was first spotted by Hackread and the Cybersec Guru.

ShinyHunters didn’t detail what Rockstar data it gained access to, only adding that the company had until April 14 to reach out or that the group would leak the compromised info that would lead to “several annoying (digital) problems.” Rockstar Games confirmed the breach to Kotaku, explaining that “a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed in connection with a third-party data breach,” and that the incident had “no impact on our organization or our players.”

Previously, Rockstar had to deal with a major hack that led to a leak including plenty of gameplay footage and assets for Grand Theft Auto VI in 2022. Following the hack, one of the 18-year-old members of the Lapsus$ group responsible for the leak, was sentenced to an “indefinite hospitalization.”

Infectious diseases borne by mosquitoes—such as malaria, dengue fever, and Zika fever—claim more than 770,000 lives worldwide each year. Understanding how mosquitoes find humans has long been a challenge in controlling the spread of these diseases. However, little has been known about how mosquitoes integrate multiple cues, including visual information and carbon dioxide, to approach their targets.

In this context, a research team led by the Georgia Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has succeeded in automatically deriving a dynamic model governing mosquito flight by applying Bayesian inference statistical methods to a vast amount of data recording mosquito movements.

Bayesian inference is a statistical technique that probabilistically determines the most plausible model parameters from observed data. Using this method, the researchers were able to construct a mathematical model that could reproduce experimental results with high accuracy while compressing mosquito behavior to fewer than 30 parameters.

“The big question was, how do mosquitoes find a human target?” explains Cheng-Yi Fei, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. “There were previous experimental studies on what kind of cues might be important. But nothing has been especially quantitative.”

Mosquitoes Have Two Modes of Flight

The research team released two female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes into a sealed experimental space and recorded their flight paths in 0.01-second increments using two infrared cameras. The data obtained from a total of 20 experiments exceeds 53 million points, with more than 400,000 flight paths recorded. This represents the largest dataset ever collected for a study quantitatively measuring mosquito flight.

The experiment began by photographing mosquitoes flying around human subjects, who were dressed in dark-colored clothing. This observation revealed that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were concentrating their approach on human heads. This was a fundamental discovery that served as the starting point for the entire study.

Next, the researchers experimented with subjects dressed in black on one side and white on the other. They found that although carbon dioxide and body odor were emitted equally from both sides of the body, the mosquitoes’ flight trajectories were concentrated only on the black side. Although strange at first glance, this result vividly demonstrated that visual stimuli play an important role in the search for targets in a windless environment.

Furthermore, a detailed analysis of mosquitoes flying in a stimulant-free environment revealed that their flight patterns could be broadly classified into two types. One was the active state, in which they actively explored the space while maintaining a speed of approximately 0.7 meter per second. The other was the idle state, in which they flew almost without using thrust. The idle state is thought to be a preparation stage for landing and was observed more frequently near the ceiling of the experimental space.

Analysis of mosquito responses to visual stimuli revealed that mosquitoes are attracted to dark objects and slow down when they get within about 40 centimeters. However, without additional cues such as body odor, humidity, or heat, mosquitoes often flew away even after approaching their target. This suggests that visual stimuli alone are insufficient to induce landing and blood-sucking.

The response to carbon dioxide sources was entirely different. Mosquitoes that entered within a radius of about 40 centimeters of the carbon dioxide source suddenly slowed to 0.2 m/s and began flying erratically, swaying without a clear direction. Numerical simulations also showed that mosquitoes can detect carbon dioxide concentrations as low as 0.1 percent and that their detection range extends to approximately 50 centimeters from the source.

Furthermore, the mosquito response changed even more dramatically when visual stimuli and carbon dioxide were presented simultaneously. The mosquitoes began to circle around the target, and significantly more mosquitoes concentrated near the target than when either stimulus was used on its own.