Zomato Q1 Highlights: Blinkit Steals The Show Again, Going-Out Vertical To Be Key Focus

Emerging from its first profitable fiscal year in FY24, listed foodtech major Zomato continued its run on the profit lane in the first quarter of FY25. 

Zomato’s profit after tax (PAT) surged to INR 253 Cr in Q1 FY25 from INR 2 Cr in the Q1 FY24, which was its maiden profitable quarter. On a quarter on quarter (QoQ) basis, PAT grew nearly 45% from INR 175 Cr.

Operating revenue jumped more than 74% to INR 4,206 Cr in Q1 FY25 from INR 2,416 Cr in the corresponding quarter of last year. Sequentially, it grew 18% from INR 3,562 Cr. 

Quick commerce vertical Blinkit, which was written off as a bad investment for Zomato at the time of its acquisition, led the show once again, reporting strong growth. While the gross order value (GOV) of Zomato’s three B2C business verticals (food delivery, quick commerce, and going out) grew 53% year-on-year (YoY) during the quarter under review, Blinkit’s GOV grew 130% YoY. 

Let’s take a look at the key highlights from Zomato’s another profitable quarter.

Blinkit Trims Down Its Losses

The quick commerce arm’s operating revenue jumped about 2.5X YoY and 22% QoQ to INR 942 Cr during the quarter under review. Its adjusted EBITDA loss also improved to INR 3 Cr in Q1 FY25 from INR 133 Cr in the year-ago quarter and INR 37 Cr in the preceding March quarter.  

In its shareholders’ letter for Q1 FY25, Zomato said that Blinkit was able to sustain the adjusted EBITDA break-even, which it attained in March 2024, in the April-June quarter.

In terms of user adoption, Blinkit received about 78.8 Mn orders in the June quarter. The average monthly transacting customer count stood at 7.6 Mn. Average order value stood at INR 625, higher than INR 617 in Q4 FY24 but lower than INR 635 in Q3 FY24.

The improvement in Blinkit’s performance came on the back of the company increasing its dark store count. Blinkit was running 639 stores at the end of the June quarter as compared to 383 stores at the end of Q1 FY24. 

“Our average GOV throughput per store has grown from about INR 6 Lakh per day per store when we were at 383 stores exactly a year ago to about INR 10 Lakh today when we are at 639 stores. For our top 50 stores today, this number is INR 18 Lakh per day per store, and growing. We believe that most of our stores today are under utilised from a capacity standpoint and hence GOV per day per store should continue increasing from here even as we aggressively scale store count,” Blinkit CEO Albinder Dhindsa said. 

The quick commerce giant is now looking to increase its store count to 2,000 by the end of 2026. A majority of these stores will be in the top 10 cities. 

Food Delivery Growth Continues To Remain Subdued

Zomato’s food delivery business’ adjusted revenue grew 10% QoQ and 29.5% YoY to INR 2,256 Cr in Q1 FY25. On similar lines, GOV went up 10% QoQ and 27% YoY to INR 9,264 Cr. Meanwhile, average monthly transacting customers rose to 20.3 Mn in Q4 from 19 Mn in the preceding quarter. 

However, contribution margin reduced slightly to 7.3% from the preceding quarter’s 7.5%. Food ordering and delivery business CEO Rakesh Ranjan said that the company is expecting to see such minor fluctuations going forward as well, “driven by seasonality and multiple other factors”.

While the vertical’s adjusted EBITDA stood at INR 313 Cr, the adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 3.4% from last quarter’s 3.3%. Ranjan said that the company is on track to take this figure to 4-5% in the near future. 

“Once we achieve that goal, our mindset is to maintain margins at those levels, and invest any incremental gains into more aggressively improving the long term health of the platform,” Ranjan said. 

Going Out Emerges As A Key Vertical

Shortly after it was disclosed that Zomato was in talks with Paytm to acquire its ticketing platform Paytm Insider, CEO Deepinder Goyal said today that the going-out vertical will be one of the key focus areas for the company in the future.

While the going-out vertical’s revenue increased marginally to INR 95 Cr during the quarter from INR 93 Cr in the preceding quarter, its GOV increased 18% QoQ to INR 1,268 Cr. Adjusted EBITDA also jumped to INR 10 Cr from last quarter’s loss of INR 11 Cr. 

“We believe that there is an opportunity to further expand our going-out offering, building on top of our dining-out business. Additional use cases for customers in the going out space include – movies, sports ticketing, live performances, shopping, staycations etc., some of which we have already launched, or are building as we speak,” Goyal said.

Zomato is launching a new app, District (by Zomato), to further grow its going-out business. The app will act as a one stop destination for customers to discover and book restaurants, and book tickets for sports, movies, among others.

With the launch of the app, Goyal is eyeing making the going-out business Zomato’s third largest B2C business.

To further build the vertical, Zomato rehired ex-head of new initiatives Rahul Ganjoo and ex- VP Pradyot Ghate nearly a month ago. 

Besides the three B2C verticals, Zomato’s supplies platform for restaurants, Hyperpure, registered a 27% QoQ and 96% YoY increase in revenue to INR 1,212 Cr.

Shares of Zomato ended Thursday’s trading session 2% higher at INR 234.10 on the BSE.