Instamart lost Rs 895 crore on an adjusted operating basis in the September quarter, while Blinkit made a profit of Rs 184 crore, according to the two companies’ shareholder letters. Swiggy says Instamart will break even once it earns Rs 30 of contribution on every order and grows to about 2.3 times its current size. Eternal’s Blinkit already earns about Rs 28 per order, by our calculation.
Customers spend about the same on each order, Rs 525 on Blinkit and Rs 506 on Instamart. Blinkit handled 398.9 million orders in the quarter, three times Instamart’s 130.3 million. That works out to a profit of about Rs 5 on every Blinkit order and a loss of about Rs 69 on every Instamart order.
Instamart’s loss rose by Rs 118 crore from the June quarter and by Rs 46 crore from a year earlier. Over the same year, Blinkit went from a Rs 156 crore loss to its Rs 184 crore profit.
How do the two compare?
The table draws on Eternal’s shareholder letter and Swiggy’s shareholder letter for the September 2026 quarter. Per-order and per-customer figures are our calculations. EBITDA refers to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.
| Quarter ended September 2026 | Blinkit | Instamart |
|---|---|---|
| Adjusted EBITDA (Rs crore) | 184 | -895 |
| Adjusted EBITDA a year earlier (Rs crore) | -156 | -849 |
| Orders (million) | 398.9 | 130.3 |
| Order growth over a year | 79% | 29% |
| Net average order value (Rs) | 525 | 506 |
| Monthly transacting customers (million) | 37.0 | 14.8 |
| Orders per customer per month | 3.6 | 2.9 |
| Stores | 2,751 | 1,240 |
| Orders per store per day | About 1,700 | 1,192 |
| Contribution per order (Rs) | About 28 | About -7 |
| Adjusted EBITDA per order (Rs) | About 5 | About -69 |
Swiggy reports Instamart’s orders per store per day. Eternal’s quarterly figures do not include this, so we divided Blinkit’s sales per store per day (Rs 9.02 lakh) by its net average order value. We compare net average order values, after discounts, since Eternal’s quarterly figures give only that measure for Blinkit. Swiggy also reports a gross average order value of Rs 708 for Instamart, before discounts. The two companies count orders differently. Eternal includes cancelled orders in Blinkit’s total, and Swiggy counts only completed orders. They also define contribution differently. Eternal deducts store and warehouse rent along with delivery and other costs.
What do the numbers show?
Blinkit’s customers order more often, and its stores handle more orders. Its customers placed about 3.6 orders a month, against 2.9 on Instamart. Each Blinkit store handled about 1,700 orders a day, about 44% more than Instamart’s 1,192, which Swiggy chief financial officer Rahul Bothra called the “best ever” on the company’s earnings call.
Blinkit stood closer to Instamart’s position a year ago. In the September 2025 quarter, it lost about Rs 7 on each of its 222.7 million orders and earned about Rs 24 of contribution per order. Its orders rose 79% over the year, and its contribution per order rose by about Rs 4.
“For a business that is largely similar, the gap in every metric I see is actually widening quite considerably,” CLSA analyst Aditya Soman told Swiggy’s management on the call. Investors value Eternal at “more than 5 times what Swiggy is,” he said.
How does Instamart plan to close the gap?
“Roughly two-thirds of this will come from higher revenue per order (product mix, own brands and advertising) and one-third from lower cost per order (densification, automation and operating leverage),” Swiggy wrote in its letter, referring to its break-even target. It needs to grow Instamart’s annualised net order value (NOV) to about Rs 60,000 crore from Rs 26,400 crore.
Instamart’s orders grew 13.8% over the June quarter, and it added 1.3 million monthly customers, its most in five quarters. Swiggy paid for that growth. It made “targeted pricing investments,” including an Rs 9 store, to bring back lapsed users, and its contribution margin fell to -1.0% of gross order value (GOV) from -0.2% in the June quarter. Swiggy expects these investments “to start reversing over the next couple of quarters,” and believes its losses “peaked out” this quarter.
Instamart will add stores only where existing ones fill up. Swiggy opens a new store when an existing one crosses about 2,000 orders a day, Bothra said, and does not plan to enter new cities in the near term.
How is Blinkit using its lead?
“A customer who shows up only for a deep discount uses the same capacity as one who orders every week across categories,” Eternal Group CEO Albinder Dhindsa wrote in Eternal’s letter. “So, for now, we focus on acquiring and retaining customers who order often, buy across categories, and are profitable to serve.”
Blinkit added 16.2 million monthly customers over the year, and its orders per customer held steady at about 3.6 a month. Eternal now plans to reach about 5,000 stores by March 2028, mostly in smaller cities, chief financial officer Akshant Goyal said in the letter. New stores in those cities reach 1,000 orders a day “in similar time as new stores in metros,” Dhindsa wrote.
Blinkit’s sales per store per day stand at Rs 9 lakh, against a steady-state target of Rs 11 lakh that Eternal set in July, Goyal said on the company’s call.
Also read:
- Swiggy narrows Q2 loss to Rs 922 crore, revenue zooms 36% YoY
- Eternal clocks Rs 125 crore profit in Q2FY27, revenue zooms 78% to Rs 24,138 crore
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