Blinkit, the quick commerce business of Zomato, posted Rs 103 crore in adjusted EBITDA loss for the third quarter of the financial year 2024-25, growing by 15.7 per cent from Rs 89 crore loss during Q3 FY24. Q2 FY25 loss for the quick delivery company stood at Rs 8 crore. On the other hand, the revenue increased by 117 per cent to Rs 1,399 crore during Q3 from Rs 644 crore during the corresponding period in FY24.
The jump in losses comes amid rising competition in the quick commerce segment with key players including Zepto and Swiggy Instamart other than Flipkart Minutes, bigbasket now, JioMart, and upcoming player Amazon. The EBITDA loss for the company stood at Rs 30 crore in comparison to Rs 56 crore during the same period last year.
Speaking on the losses, Deepinder Goyal, Managing Director and CEO, Zomato, said the losses in the quick commerce business this quarter are largely on account of pulling forward the growth investments in the business that the company would have otherwise made in a staggered manner over the next few quarters.
The quick commerce GOV (gross order value) jumped by 120 per cent YoY. The company added 368 net new stores (152 in Q2FY25 and 216 in Q3FY25) in the last two quarters accounting for about 37 per cent of its total store network of 1,007 stores.
“As of now, it seems like we will get to our target of 2,000 stores by Dec 2025, much earlier than our previous guidance of Dec 2026,” Goyal said.
In addition to the operating expenditure, Blinkit also incurred capital expenditure of around Rs 370 crore in the last two quarters for setting up the 368 new stores and 1.3 million sqft of warehousing space.
“To us, the biggest impact of the intensifying competition has been the acceleration in customer awareness and adoption of quick commerce. We have seen this play out in the early days of the food delivery business as well, when heightened competition led to higher investments in customer acquisition across the industry as a whole,” Albinder Dhindsa, Founder & CEO, Blinkit said on growing competition.
However, heightened competition has led to a pause in margin expansion in the business, which is expected and should be temporary, Dhindsa added. So far, he said the company has not seen any attrition of its core customers which tells that customers are continuing to choose Blinkit over other options.
According to a Motilal Oswal report in November last year, Blinkit led the quick commerce market with a share of 46 per cent followed by 29 per cent share owned by Zepto and 24 per cent by Swiggy Instamart.
Zomato had recently invested Rs 500 crore Blinkit, bringing the total investment in the company to Rs 2,800 crore.