Eternal, which owns Zomato and Blinkit, posted a net profit of ₹25 crore in the June quarter, down 90 per cent compared to ₹253 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal. The sharp decline in profits was due to increased investments in quick commerce and going-out businesses. However, revenue from operations surged 70 per cent to ₹7,167 crore.
For the first time, quarterly net order value (NOV) of quick commerce business surpassed that of food delivery business at ₹9,203 crore, up 127 per cent year on year. Food delivery NOV stood at ₹8,967 crore registering a y-o-y growth of 13 per cent due to sluggish demand trends.
Commenting on the food delivery business in the letter to shareholders, Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, Eternal, said, “I think the y-o-y growth is likely to bottom out now, as we recover from the demand slowdown we started seeing in late-2024. For FY26, it looks unlikely that the business will deliver a 20 per cent plus NOV growth, but we should be north of 15 per cent and hopefully trending towards 20 per cent y-o-y growth in FY27.”
“Every year in Q1, margins get impacted (in both food delivery and quick commerce), because of lower availability of delivery partners due to festivals and seasonal factors. Long term, we believe there is further scope of some margin expansion, but the current focus is on ramping up investments to drive further growth in the business,” he added.
Goyal also noted that the company has made investments in the 10-minute food delivery service Bistro, where Blinkit owns and operates 38 live kitchens in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru, which impacted profitability.
On the overall profitability front, Akshant Goyal, Chief Financial Officer, Eternal, said, “Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA declined 42 per cent to ₹172 crore in Q1FY26, largely on account of the continuing investments in quick commerce and going-out businesses, which were partly offset by the improvement in food delivery Adjusted EBITDA margin.”
“On an annualised basis, we are now at almost $10 billion of annual NOV across our B2C businesses and quick commerce is now our largest B2C business contributing to almost half of this annualised NOV,” he added.
Q-com business
The company said that quick commerce business under Blinkit added 243 new dark stores in Q1FY26, taking the total count to 1,544 stores. “We are on track to get to 2,000 stores by December 2025. NOV grew 127 per cent, driven by growth in average monthly transacting customers from 7.6 million to 16.9 million over the past year. The margins improved from -2.4 per of NOV in Q4FY25 to -1.8 per cent despite continued investments in new store roll-outs and seasonal factors,” added Albinder Dhindsa, Founder & CEO, Blinkit.
Meanwhile, the company said it will gradually transition its quick commerce business from a marketplace model to inventory ownership over the next two-three quarters. It added that control on inventory gives it more leverage on margins and enables faster assortment expansion.
District platform
The company noted that the going-out business is now a ₹8,000-crore annualised NOV business. “In Q1FY26, we had about two million average monthly transacting customers transacting about twice a month on an average. We are building District as a one-of-a-kind platform for going-out in India by offering large going-out use cases including dining-out, movies, sports, concert ticketing etc on a single app, for the most premium customer base in the country,” Goyal added.
Published on July 21, 2025