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Blinkit Now Sells Almost Twice What Zomato Delivers in Food. Your Dinner Order Has Become the Slower Business.

By Ananya Garg

Updated on November 6, 2026
IST 3:43 pm

Results from Eternal and Swiggy for July–September 2026 show a clear split. Restaurant delivery is growing at around 18–22 per cent a year and making steady profits. Ten-minute grocery delivery is growing roughly two to almost four times as fast, and at Eternal it is now the much bigger business.

A bag of groceries handed over at a doorstep

The numbers, side by side

Eternal, the parent of Zomato and Blinkit, reported on 21 October. Zomato’s food delivery business recorded net order value (NOV) of ₹11,445 crore in the September quarter, up 21.5 per cent from a year earlier. Blinkit’s NOV was ₹20,940 crore, up 79.3 per cent. The grocery app’s order value is now about 1.8 times the food app’s. A year earlier, the gap was ₹11,679 crore to ₹9,423 crore.

Swiggy reported a day later. Its food delivery gross order value (GOV) was ₹10,054 crore, up 17.7 per cent. Instamart, its quick-commerce arm, recorded GOV of ₹9,230 crore, up 31.4 per cent, and NOV of ₹6,594 crore, up 34.8 per cent. At Swiggy, food is still the bigger of the two, but only just.

The two companies use different headline measures, so Zomato’s NOV and Swiggy’s GOV should not be compared directly. The direction within each company, though, is the same.

Food delivery: slower, but it pays

The case for restaurant delivery is now profit, not speed of growth. Zomato’s food business earned an adjusted EBITDA of ₹627 crore, up 25 per cent, equal to 5.5 per cent of its order value. Its monthly transacting customers rose 16 per cent to 28 million. Operating revenue grew 37 per cent to ₹3,396 crore.

Swiggy’s food arm earned an adjusted EBITDA of ₹341 crore, ₹101 crore more than a year earlier. “Our Food delivery business delivered its highest-ever profits and margins,” said Sriharsha Majety, Swiggy’s MD and Group CEO.

Eternal founder Deepinder Goyal, as reported by Inc42, argued the category is far from full: “There is still a lot of headroom. Restaurant food is a small part of how India eats.”

Quick commerce: bigger, barely profitable

Blinkit swung to an adjusted EBITDA of ₹184 crore, against a loss of ₹156 crore a year earlier. That is only 0.9 per cent of its order value, a sixth of the food business’s margin. The growth is coming from stores: Blinkit added 308 net dark stores in the quarter to reach 2,751, and raised its target for March 2027 to more than 3,500 from 3,000. It expects about 5,000 by March 2028.

Instamart ended the quarter with 1,240 dark stores across 133 cities after 69 net additions. Swiggy as a whole still reported a consolidated loss of ₹922 crore, narrower than ₹1,092 crore a year earlier.

The scale shows up in group numbers too. Eternal’s consolidated revenue rose 78 per cent to ₹24,138 crore and net profit nearly doubled to ₹125 crore, though part of the revenue jump reflects Blinkit’s shift to owning inventory: like-for-like adjusted revenue grew 58 per cent. Swiggy’s revenue rose 36 per cent to ₹7,571 crore, and its platform had 27.8 million monthly transacting users, up 21 per cent.

The build-out is cash-hungry. Eternal’s cash balance fell by ₹1,813 crore to ₹16,475 crore in the quarter, which management partly put down to Blinkit stocking up inventory before the festive season.

What it says about how India eats

For a household, the two apps now overlap. A ten-minute app sells milk, bread, frozen parathas, ready-to-eat meals, ice cream and party snacks: the things that once went with, or replaced, a restaurant order. The results suggest more of the new spending is going to the grocery basket than to the takeaway bag.

Food delivery is not shrinking. Zomato’s order value still grew by more than a fifth, and both companies are earning more on every rupee of food ordered than they did a year ago. But the growth that once defined the category now sits with quick commerce, and both companies are putting their new stores, and their cash, there.

Going out is also growing. Eternal’s District app, which covers dining-out and events, recorded NOV of ₹3,259 crore, up 58 per cent, while still running an adjusted EBITDA loss of ₹64 crore.

Eternal’s restaurant-supplies arm, Hyperpure, grew more slowly, with revenue up 13 per cent to ₹1,154 crore and turned a small adjusted EBITDA profit of ₹10 crore.

What to watch

The festive quarter. October–December includes the peak gifting and party season. Blinkit’s pre-festive inventory build means the next results will show whether that stock turned into sales.

Store density. Blinkit’s target implies about 750 more stores by March 2027. Each one extends ten-minute delivery to more neighbourhoods.

Food delivery growth. If restaurant delivery stays near 20 per cent while quick commerce keeps compounding, the gap at both companies will widen. That is a description of the trend, not a view on either company’s shares.