Built for the brands the enterprise tools ignore.
Quick commerce moved a huge share of Indian D2C sales onto shelves that change store by store — and the tools that could explain it were priced for the ₹100-crore CPG, gated behind a data connection and a six-figure contract.
We kept meeting D2C founders who could recite their national Blinkit rank but couldn't answer a simpler question: in which specific dark stores are you actually winning, thin, or invisible — and where do your rivals sit in each one? Their seller panels couldn't tell them. The enterprise platforms could, sort of, but only after an integration and a contract most of them couldn't justify.
So we built the opposite. Everything here comes from the public shelf — what any shopper sees in their pincode — read store by store, for a brand and its competitors, and put in one place. No seller login. No ad account. Nothing to connect. You see the truth before you commit to anything.
It's introduced by people who already run quick-commerce advertising for D2C brands, so it arrives from a team that knows the channel — not a cold signup. And it's priced for the brand the giants overlook.
We'd rather tell you what we can't see than over-claim.
That posture is the whole point — it's what makes the read trustworthy.
You connect nothing
Every figure comes from the public shelf. No accounts to link, so there's no data of yours for us to hold or leak.
Your report is yours alone
Verified by your brand email and locked to your brand. No other brand can see it, and yours is never shown to anyone else or used in our marketing.
Labelled, and honest about limits
We mark sample vs live, read shelf stock as a stockout signal (not exact units), and measure who owns the paid shelf — we don't pretend to know rivals' rupee bids.
We don't argue with your panel
We don't overwrite your metrics. We de-average them and add the competitor layer your panel can't contain.
Below the enterprise floor
Made for the growing brand the six-figure tools price out. No lock-in, and the first report is free.
By people who run the channel
Brought to you by a team that already runs quick-commerce ads for D2C brands — so it comes with context, not a sales script.
See what we can show you.
Type your brand, verify with your brand email, and get the report — or talk to us first.
Who built this
The Dark Store Index was built by Gulshan Iyer. I run Arbhu Enterprises, an eco-friendly tableware manufacturer and exporter based in India, and work as an AI and marketing consultant. Other projects are at gulshaniyer.com.
I don't come from the quick-commerce industry. I'm an operator and marketer who kept reading about a market nobody was actually measuring at shelf level, and who had the technical skills to go and measure it instead of waiting. That's the whole origin story — there isn't a more impressive one.
It matters mainly because it tells you what to trust here: the method, not the founder's résumé. Every number this tool produces is counted from the public shelf, and the things it refuses to claim are listed as plainly as the things it does.
What we won't do
- We won't ask for your seller login. Not at signup, not later. The read works on the public shelf, so account access would add risk without adding data.
- We won't quote anyone's ad spend. Bids aren't public. We count sponsored placements owned — a fact — and never convert it into rupees, which would be a guess.
- We won't claim a catalogue rank. Platforms cap how many results they return, so the lowest position we see is a limit of the read, not proof of where you sit overall.
- We won't spend your credits without you asking. Refreshes and ongoing monitoring happen when you trigger them, not on a schedule you didn't choose.
- We won't show one client's data to another. Public reporting is category level only. No client's brand, private data or competitive set appears in anything we publish.
Where the public data lives
Category-level findings are published openly at The Dark Store Index — including the method and its limits, and a correction we made when one of our own headline findings turned out to be a measurement artefact.
If you're a journalist or analyst, we'll run a custom read and share the raw numbers, and set up tool access with credits — unconditionally, with no obligation to write about us. Write to hello@shelfxray.in.