Eternal's Q-commerce arm Blinkit rivals food delivery business in order value

Groceries have caught up with food at Zomato and Blinkit parent Eternal, marking a turning point for the delivery giant that fetches anything from household essentials to cuisines of choice.

Eternal’s quick-commerce arm Blinkit nearly equalled for the first time its once-mainstay food delivery business Zomato in net order value (NOV)— excluding discounts—in April-June, accounting for about ₹10,000 crore of the total ₹20,183 crore order value during the quarter, it said in an exchange filing on Monday detailing Q1 FY26 earnings. Quick commerce now makes for almost half of Eternal’s $10 billion annualized NOV, signaling a major shift in the company’s growth engines.

Bistro drives up food delivery losses

Despite declaring in the Q4 FY25 earnings call that it saw “no future” for ultra-fast food delivery, Eternal has ramped up investments in Bistro, a 10-minute meal initiative under Blinkit.

Losses at the food delivery business mounted during the quarter, driven by the company's investments in Bistro, which is a capex-heavy initiative. Although Bistro operates under the Blinkit brand, its financial impact is reflected in the food delivery segment in Zomato’s reporting structure—contributing to the sharp drop in profitability for that segment in Q1 FY26.

In Q1 FY26, Eternal reported a sharp 90% year-on-year drop in profit after tax to ₹25 crore, from ₹253 crore in the same quarter last year. This precipitous fall in profit was driven largely by Bistro-related investments and the upfront costs of transitioning Blinkit to an inventory-led model.

“The increase in quarterly losses (in the food delivery business) is largely on account of investments in the 10‑minute food delivery service Bistro, where the kitchen infrastructure is owned and operated by Blinkit...” the company said in a shareholder letter.

Despite the sharp fall in quarterly profit, Eternal's shares rose 5.4% to close at ₹271.2 apiece on the BSE on Monday, boosted by the company's strong quick-commerce performance and expectations of an uptick in the food business going forward, analysts said.

“In the food business, there's going to be acceleration in the medium term. They are going to see growth rates of more than 20%, which was earlier in the range of high teens. The other very big positive surprise was the performance of quick-commerce—growth rates have been slightly ahead of expectations. Margins have largely bottomed out in the quick-commerce business, we may not expect to see losses increasing significantly from here on if competitive intensity remains at these levels,” said Karan Taurani, executive vice-president at Elara Capital.

The company's renewed bet on ultra-fast meals comes despite Zomato shuttering its Quick and Everyday services last quarter—models that relied on restaurant aggregation and were deemed misaligned with long-term strategy due to poor customer experience and limited value. In contrast, Bistro is fully owned and operated by the company through Blinkit, with control over menus, kitchens, and delivery—marking a shift from aggregator to first-party food delivery.

The company now operates 38 company-owned kitchens across Delhi-NCR and Bangalore—a capex-heavy model that contributed significantly to rising losses this quarter.

“While customer-side traction is pretty strong, we need to work and find answers to making money in this business,” the company said in its shareholder letter.

For FY26, ₹150 crore in losses has been budgeted for Bistro, Nugget and Greening India initiatives.

Bistro targets consumers seeking either affordable, home-style meals or quick, snackable food delivered in under 10 minutes.

The company’s food delivery business reported a 13% year-on-year rise in NOV to ₹8,967 crore, slowing from 27% jump recorded in the year-ago period.

The company’s management said that there has been a slight slowdown in the number of transacting customers and the number of app openings but demand was now returning.

"In the first three weeks of the quarter, the year-on-year growth (on food delivery) sort of bottomed out, and we are now seeing better app openings from consumers, better resurrection rates. Early signs are why we think that we should see better growth from here on, but again still early in the quarter,” said Kunal Swarup, head of corporate development, during the company's post earnings call.

Quick commerce growth driven by depth, not breadth

The Blinkit business continues to scale by deepening presence in existing markets rather than geographic expansion, said AlbinderDhindsa, chief executive officer (CEO), Blinkit.

“Most of our current growth is still coming from existing polygons—even this quarter, less than 5% came from newly launched areas. For example, Delhi, which is already well covered geographically, grew 70% year-on-year this quarter,” he said during first-quarter earnings call on Monday.

Blinkit now serves about 17 million monthly transacting customers (MTC), rapidly closing in on Zomato’s food delivery base of 23 million. The overlap between the two customer cohorts remains low, indicating that food and quick commerce are serving distinct use cases, Dhindsa said.

Despite the growth, tier-2 and tier-3 markets remain loss-making due to upfront infrastructure build-out and underutilized capacity.

“Our supply chain investment in tier-two and tier-three cities is more greenfield, and therefore in the short term, there is usually higher margin pressure in these cities. We’re building out a brand new supply chain to be able to supply better, but sometimes the utilization is also worse off,” Dhindsa explained.

Moreover, Blinkit remains committed to ultra-fast (<15-minute) delivery and has no plans to introduce longer formats like Megasaver-style 30–40 minute delivery, Dhindsa said, adding that the company doesn’t see an opportunity in that segment, as extending delivery times would break the economics of Blinkit's current model.

Inventory ownership impact on Hyperpure

Over the next two–three quarters, Blinkit is transitioning from a marketplace model to owning its inventory.

This shift will directly impact Hyperpure, as many of its non-restaurant B2B (business-to-business) buyers were sellers on the Blinkit platform. As a result, Hyperpure’s non-restaurant revenue will decline, though the restaurant-facing business will remain unaffected. Hyperpure is Eternal's separate B2B platform that supplies ingredients to restaurants.

“Some of these customers used to be on the Blinkit marketplace side. Now we are becoming their suppliers via our inventory,” the management explained.

Hyperpure’s total revenue rose 89% year-on-year to ₹2,295 crore in Q1 FY26, but the company cautioned that this number will soften as the inventory-led model scales.