bengaluru, Sept. 5 -- India's quick-commerce platforms are actively hiring for a role that has taken on new urgency following recent regulatory enforcement: a quality checker. A Mint review revealed at least 94 open positions in Bengaluru across Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy Instamart, as regulators step up inspections of the dark stores behind rapid deliveries. The regulatory crackdown has intensified of late. On 13 August, Maharashtra's food and drug administration (FDA) inspected 86 facilities, including dark stores and food-storage units linked to the three companies. Lapses involving cockroaches, expired inventory, and cold rooms operating above mandated temperatures led the FDA to suspend 14 licenses, including five each associated with Blinkit and Zepto, and two with Instamart. Just two days prior, Karnataka's food safety department sealed a Zepto warehouse in Hoskote, near Bengaluru, citing hygiene and labelling violations. Zepto said after the sealing that it had "fully cooperated with the authorities during the inspection, taken note of the observations and suggestions shared, and was taking the necessary steps to address them". This is not the first time quick-commerce dark stores have faced food-safety action. In June 2025, Maharashtra's FDA suspended Zepto's Dharavi licence after finding fungal growth and expired stock, though the order was revoked two weeks later. The same month, the FDA shut a Blinkit dark store in Pune's Balewadi over several lapses, including operating without a food licence, improper storage, dusty racks, and inadequate pest-control records. Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto did not respond to Mint's queries. Dark stores have become larger as quick-commerce companies scale. Sameer Varma, executive director at ColdStar Logistics, said, "When we began working with quick-commerce platforms in 2020, most dark stores were between 1,000 and 1,200 sq ft. Today, excluding the larger mega stores, they average around 2,000 to 2,500 sq ft." ColdStar now services about 7,000 dark stores, Varma added. Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart had a combined 5,026 dark stores in May, up 48% from a year earlier, according to Equirus. To break even, a typical dark store needs to process about 1,500 to 2,000 orders a day....