Deepinder Goyal on Scale Before Profitability

Post the Blinkit acquisition Zomato has invested roughly 2,800 crore rupees into the quick-commerce unit, including a 500-crore infusion in January 2025. The continuing capital top-ups indicate that quick-commerce remained a cash-hungry vertical even after integration, requiring ongoing investment to defend share against Swiggy Instamart, Zepto and newer entrants.

Goyal pushed Zomato into food delivery in March 2015, originally leaning on third-party logistics like Delhivery and Runnr before acquiring Runnr in 2017 to bring a delivery fleet in-house. That infrastructural pivot — from a software marketplace into a hybrid tech-plus-logistics operator — set the unit-economics battle that Zomato would fight against Swiggy for the next decade.

Zomato's July 2021 IPO raised about 9,375 crore rupees, then among the largest Indian technology listings. The offer drew outsized retail and institutional interest and validated the loss-making-platform listing thesis on Indian exchanges, even though the shares would trade well below issue price for an extended stretch after the post-listing pop.

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.