Food delivery and quick commerce firm Eternal posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 125 crore in the second quarter ended September 2026 (Q2 FY27), up 92% from Rs 65 crore in the same quarter last year.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, profit surged 36% from Rs 92 crore.
Revenue from operations zoomed 78% to Rs 24,138 crore from Rs 13,590 crore in the year-ago quarter. Sequentially, it grew 19% from Rs 20,211 crore.
The sharp year-on-year (YoY) increase in operating revenue is mainly due to a shift to an inventory-led model in quick commerce, where revenue now includes the full monetary value of goods sold versus largely marketplace commissions in Q1 FY26.
Quick commerce continues to be the largest revenue channel for Eternal. Blinkit reported Rs 19,152 crore in revenue in Q2 FY27, up 94% YoY. The quick commerce platform posted an EBITDA profit of Rs 184 crore during the quarter against an adjusted EBITDA loss of Rs 156 crore in Q2 FY26.
The case for quick commerce in smaller cities
Blinkit is seeing demand for quick commerce in smaller cities, which remain chronically underserved.
In a letter to shareholders, Eternal Group CEO Albinder Dhindsa said skepticism around whether the quick commerce model would work in non-metro cities “usually rests on three assumptions – incomes are lower, basket is smaller and density is too thin for unit economics to work”.
Blinkit’s own data thus far suggests that the first is true but contradicts the other two arguments.
“New stores in these cities reach 1,000 orders per day in similar time as new stores in metros (sometimes even faster). Net average order value (NAOVs) are within 85-90% of metros, with baskets also containing categories that we did not expect – such as premium beverages, branded diapers, gaming consoles etc. Customer retention in these cities is comparable to that in the metros,” Dhindsa said.
The challenge, he said, is to build supply to these cities. For many products, Blinkit is building last-mile delivery, picking products directly from brand warehouses and stocking them in its own mother warehouses, to serve customers in smaller cities.
“We do not expect every small city to look like a metro. Some will stay subscale, and we will be disciplined about where we expand. But wherever we have built supply, demand has shown up faster and deeper than we had anticipated. In metros, we usually compete for a market that already exists. In smaller cities, we are building the market and the supply. That is why we are bullish,” said Dhindsa.
“Paybacks are extremely good in these markets. These markets are less competitive. And I think going in first does give one an advantage of locking in the early users of those markets,” Eternal Group CFO Akshant Goyal said on the analysts’ call.
Blinkit added 308 net new stores in Q2 FY27, taking its dark store network to 2,751 stores. The company now expects to cross 3,500 stores by March 2027 against its earlier guidance of 3,000 stores.
Why does Blinkit not have a private-label play?
“A private label has to pass one of two tests – either it fills a gap and brings incremental demand to the platform, or it improves the economics of demand we already serve, after accounting for everything it takes to build and market the private label. We have evaluated both and believe it doesn’t pass either of these tests,” Dhindsa said.
According to Blinkit’s CEO, a private label or a house brand requires a differentiated product, which customers choose for its quality, story-telling or design. “That means building a brand, not just putting our name on a product”.
The private label strategy also involves continuous product development, manufacturing development, quality control, inventory management across a full portfolio of SKUs, sampling and marketing to drive trial and repeat.
The company believes that brands are better suited to build these capabilities as “it would not be within our core circle of competence”.
The exception is where deeper supply-chain control itself creates value. Fruits and vegetables are the clearest case – and Hyperpure already gives Blinkit that benefit through sourcing and quality control, without a separate consumer-facing brand.
Blinkit is the distribution and discovery platform for thousands of brands, many of them emerging. The shelf space and visibility we would spend marketing an own label can instead help other brands grow on our fair and neutral platform. This also allows us to earn advertising revenue as the brands grow.
We don’t want to become both the platform and a competitor to the brands on the platform. We would rather avoid that conflict unless the growth or margin case for owning the label is clearly compelling.
The commentary come at a time when Blinkit’s rival Swiggy Instamart is strengthening its private-label play through its clean-food brand NOICE and fresh-produce brand Nectr.
Food delivery picks up momentum
During the quarter ended September 2026, Zomato raked in a revenue of Rs 3,879 crore, up 35% YoY. This implies food delivery business accounted for 16% Eternal’s revenue in Q2 FY27. Adjusted EBITDA profit rose 25% to Rs 627 crore.
“Most of the recent growth comes from more people ordering, and ordering more often. Average monthly transacting customers grew 16% YoY to 28 million, and a growing share of new users are ordering food online for the first time, many of them outside our top eight cities,” said Deepinder Goyal, co-founder of Eternal.
Meanwhile, District brought in revenue of Rs 304 crore, up 61% from Rs 189 crore a year earlier. Platform fees and other charges paid on food delivery orders generated Rs 155 crore during the quarter.
In the shareholders’ letter, Goyal also addressed growing concerns around AI agents that shop on behalf of consumers. The narrative that agents will become the default commerce interface and platforms that fail to adapt will be disintermediated is rather “simplistic,” according to Zomato’s co-founder.
“We continue to believe vertical commerce, at least in some categories, will have an edge over super apps, whether traditional or agentic. Blinkit and Zomato sit in the low-risk zone against the threat of agentic commerce and might even benefit from partial market share capture by agents in these categories. District sits in the medium-to-high risk zone,” Goyal said.
Read our full coverage of what Goyal said about impact of AI agents on Eternal’s businesses here.
Additionally, Zomato’s co-founder also announced a privacy-focused AI Assistant dubbed ‘dark.ai’, which is expected to roll out globally within 2026.
Key operating metrics
Quick commerce
- Orders: Blinkit fulfilled 398.9 million orders in Q2 FY27, up from 331 million in Q1 FY27 and 222.7 million in Q2 FY26.
- Net average order value: Rose to Rs 525, compared to Rs 518 in Q1 FY27 and Rs 524 in Q2 FY26.
- Average monthly transacting customers: 37 million
- Average monthly delivery partners: 653,000
- Dark store count: 2,751
Food delivery
- Average monthly transacting customers: 28 million, up from 27.2 million in Q1 FY27.
- Average monthly active restaurant partners: 334,000
- Average monthly active delivery partners: 736,000
Also read:
- Five strategic developments from Eternal’s Q2FY27 earnings call
- 7 key takeaways from Eternal Q1 FY27 earnings call
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