Deepinder Goyal on Cash-Flow Discipline

Aggressive international expansion through 2012–2015 took Zomato into more than 20 countries, including the United States via the acquisition of Seattle-based Urbanspoon. The breadth-first push proved expensive; over 2022–2024 the company unwound most overseas markets, liquidating ten foreign subsidiaries inside a year — a tacit admission that global sprawl had underdelivered on unit economics.

Zomato's parent reported a net profit of 253 crore rupees in the relevant reporting period alongside Blinkit's revenue surge — a moment that crystallised the dual-engine thesis of food delivery plus quick commerce. The combined numbers made Eternal a case study in disciplined post-IPO scaling of an Indian consumer-internet conglomerate.

A January 2026 disclosure noted that Eternal's Q1 PAT had jumped on the back of Blinkit's improving operating performance — a clean inversion of the early-2020s narrative that quick commerce would structurally burn cash. The result validated Goyal's patience in funding Blinkit through three loss-making years before the unit inflected.

Zomato reported its first quarterly profit in 2023, a milestone Goyal attributed to scale efficiencies, advertising monetisation and a tightening of zone-level delivery economics. The break into the green was read across the startup ecosystem as evidence that Indian consumer-internet firms could graduate from cash-burn to operating profit without ceding growth.

In March 2019 Zomato sold its UAE food-delivery business to Talabat, an early instance of the company exiting markets where the local density was unattractive. The pattern would intensify after 2022 as Zomato quietly wound down most international operations, liquidating ten overseas subsidiaries in under a year — a rare case of a unicorn voluntarily unwinding a global footprint.