Blinkit expects to cross 3,500 stores by FY27

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Eternal's quick commerce platform Blinkit expects to cross 3,500 stores by March 2027, while company's founder and CEO Albinder Dhindsa stays bullish on small cities by creating 'new demand and new behaviors for customers'.

"We now expect to cross 3,500 stores by March 2027, and our current plans point to about 5,000 stores by March 2028," said Akshant Goyal, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Eternal as the company released its Q2 FY27 earnings on Wednesday.

New bets are working for Blinkit, he said, as stores in smaller cities and stores built around newer categories are on the right margin and payback trajectory.

Check Eternal Q2 results here

The quick commerce platform looks at a 'clearer read on competition' as new stores are clearing the return thresholds even at the current level of competitive intensity.

Zomato recorded Rs 627 crore of profit, registering a 25% YoY growth, while Blinkit recorded a profit of Rs 184 crore, as compared to Rs 156 crore loss.

"Our cash balance and profits from both food delivery and quick commerce businesses, also let us fund this pace of growth comfortably," CFO Akshant said.

In a letter to shareholders, Albinder said demand is there in small cities but but has been chronically underserved.

"The skepticism usually rests on three assumptions - incomes are lower, basket is smaller, and density is too thin for the economics to work. Our data so far says the first is true but matters less than people expect. Data contradicts the other two," he noted.

Blinkit's offerings makes it a hit in smaller cities.

"Organised retail could have served this demand with greater width of selection and better pricing but it never never fully developed in these cities. As a result, a lot of what we stock and sell is either not available locally or takes days to arrive through alternative channels like e-commerce. By making this assortment accessible within minutes, we create new demand and new behaviors for customers in these cities," he said.

Blinkit's new stories in small cities reach 1,000 orders per day in similar time as new stores in metros.

Eternal noted that building supply in these cities is the "harder part" but will serve as a moat for the company in the future. As the quick commerce giant expanded to smaller markets, it had to build first-mile capability, picking directly from brand warehouses into its mother warehouses that feed these locations.

"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," Albinder said.

"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," he noted.

In Q2 FY27, Blinkit's net order value (NOV) grew 79.3% YoY to Rs 20,940 crore with QoQ growth at 22.2%.

Over the last four years, Zomato's NOV has more than doubled, from Rs 18,160 crore in FY22 to INR 37,993 crore in FY26. The food delivery platform attributed the recent growth to the growing consumer base and frequency of orders as average monthly transacting customers grew 16% YoY to 28.0 million, and a growing share of new users are ordering food online for the first time.

But the growth has not hit the ceiling yet as Zomato expects the food delivery market to keep compounding at more than 20% for many years.