Published: [November 2, 2026]
StartupFeed Quick Take
- Mehndi orders on Flipkart Minutes rose 16X on Karwa Chauth, October 29
- Mask and body art orders rose 6X on Halloween, October 31
- Quick commerce orders across India grew 105% in the week to October 26
Flipkart Minutes sold 16 times its usual mehndi on Karwa Chauth, October 29, as small festivals became a real sales window for quick commerce.
Those numbers compare that day with a normal shopping day, not with last year. Flipkart gave them to The Economic Times, along with its Halloween counts.
Havan items, kalash and pooja thalis sold 5 times their usual volume on Flipkart Minutes. Alta, bindis and saris sold 3 times. Gift sets, perfumes and deos doubled.
Flipkart Minutes Saw Mask Orders Rise 6X on Halloween
On Halloween, October 31, Flipkart Minutes sold 6 times its normal volume of masks and body art. Candy orders tripled. Children’s costumes doubled against a normal day.
Halloween is popular in only some Indian cities. Flipkart Minutes ran a short horror series with the Ramsay Brothers inside its order tracking screen. Zepto opened special pages for masks, costumes and festive food.
Blinkit, Instamart, Zepto and Flipkart Minutes are building in-app pages for these small occasions and pushing ads in chosen localities. The spending is aimed at specific areas, not at the whole country.
Myntra’s M-Now, the fashion platform’s rapid delivery arm, saw orders rise about 70% on October 29. In late October, M-Now was scaled up in Lucknow and Jaipur, with 15,000 styles from 800 brands from 30 minutes.
Flipkart Minutes runs close to 1,200 micro-fulfilment centres across more than 150 cities. That network is what lets a one-day spike be met at all.
Quick Commerce Orders Doubled Year on Year Before Karwa Chauth
Quick commerce order volumes across India grew 105% year-on-year in the week to October 26. A Unicommerce analysis of more than 30 million order items shows that. Overall online retail orders grew 10.4% in the same week.
Beauty and personal care orders grew more than 22%. Home decor grew 15% and jewellery 12%.
Brand-owned websites grew 24% in the same week. Online marketplaces still carried more than half of all order volumes.
So the festival spikes sit on a base that has already doubled. A 16X day on Flipkart Minutes is 16 times a normal day that is itself much busier than last year.
In the first week of the festive sale, from October 7 to 13, quick commerce orders grew 85%. The pace picked up as Karwa Chauth came closer. Tier 3 towns placed 42% of all festive orders in that opening week.
What this means for you: If you sell beauty, ethnic wear or gifting on a quick commerce app, these one-day spikes now decide your month. Get your festive SKUs listed and stocked in dark stores before Diwali week, not during it.
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