Food ordering and restaurant discovery company Zomato’s founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal on Monday said its quick-commerce service Blinkit, which competes with Zepto and Swiggy’s Instamart currently, will be bigger than the food delivery business in a year. Goyal was speaking at the Startup Mahakumbh event at Bharat Mandapam in Delhi.
For the uninitiated, Zomato acquired Blinkit in August 2022 for Rs 4,447 crore and it continues to scale up since then. Even as Zomato’s food delivery arm grew nearly 30 per cent year-on-year growth in sales in the October-December quarter, brokerage firm Nomura has expected that Blinkit’s gross order value will be higher than the food delivery business by FY28, FE had reported in February 2024.
Moreover, Blinkit’s long-term profitability is also expected to be at par with Zomato’s food delivery business on the back higher scope for ad monetisation.
Zomato’s adjusted revenue for its food delivery business stood at Rs 2,025 crore in Q3 vis-a-vis Rs 1,925 crore during the year-ago period. The revenue from Blinkit, which will compete with Flipkart’s upcoming quick commerce service also ahead, stood at Rs 644 crore.
Underscoring the challenge in building a generational company due to changing technology and business ecosystem in the country, Goyal, in a chat with Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani, also said that no business model will last beyond a decade or two and hence there is (always) a need to create new business models.
“You have to create new businesses based on the outcomes you have created so far. Zomato is at version 4.0 in 16 years journey,” said Goyal.
“In any business, there will be a change. So, as soon as we start saying that nothing will change, we are dead,” he added.
Speaking on the near-death experiences in the life cycle of a company, Goyal highlighted the significance of the right team in a startup.
“Near-death experiences are a lot of types such as if you are not having money or competition is killing you or your team is getting complacent. Near death is whenever you are feeling stuck,” Goyal said as he recalled the challenges faced during the Covid period.
“We asked our entire team for voluntary salary cuts during covid and 80 per cent took the cut. So, culture is the only long-term moat (for any company). Nothing else works.”