Daybreak - How Blinkit came to control more than half of India’s most cutthroat market

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Blinkit now controls more than half of India’s quick commerce market, a sector long thought too competitive, too crowded, and too expensive for anyone to dominate.From its ever-expanding network of dark stores that powers its 10-minute deliveries to the recent, bold pivot toward an inventory-led model, Blinkit’s rise is built on a mix of speed, scale, and risk.But rapid expansion also brings higher costs and greater exposure. Has Blinkit created a sustainable advantage, or has it built a fragile empire that could be tested soon?Tune in. Compete in India's first and only case competition. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production.

Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. Blinket now controls more than half of India's quick commerce market. That is the headline.

More than 50% share in a sector that was supposed to be too competitive, too crowded, and too expensive for anyone to dominate. Now, to be fair, Blinket was already the market leader in the quick commerce space. But what makes this development remarkable is Blinket's turnaround story. A few years ago, when it was still called Growfers, the company was on its deathbed. This was the first year of the pandemic. Demand for instant deliveries was exploding, but Grofers did not have the money to join the race. Rivals were raising big rounds and expanding fast.

Grofers, meanwhile, was stuck on the sidelines badly in need of cash. And the lifeline arrived in June 2021. Zamato stepped in with $120 million. Grofers was then rebranded as Blinket and soon after it became a unicorn. A year later in 2022, Zomato went all the way and acquired Blinket for a deal worth nearly $600 million. Suddenly, the struggling grocery platform was positioned. as Zumato's boldest bet on the future. But the years that followed were not smooth.

Blinket faced brutal competition from Swiggy's Instamort and a fast-rising Zepto. It faced strikes from its own delivery partners, and many of its newly opened dock stores were not generating the revenue to pay for themselves. Despite that turbulence, Blinket kept pushing. It doubled down on the 10-minute promise. It widened its product catalog and leaned on Zomato's capital and customer base. And now the comeback is complete.

Blinket sits at the top controlling more than half of the market. The real story now, though, is whether Blinkets's two big bets, an aggressive dark store empire and a risky inventory-led model will sustain its lead or will it weigh it down. Welcome to Daybreak, a business news podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nick Dha Sharma, and I don't chase the news cycle. Instead, every day of the week, my colleague Rachel Vargis and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time.

Today is Thursday, the 25th of September. You see, the success of any quick commerce business depends on two things. It's dark stores and the right mix of SKUs or stockkeeping units. Dark stores are the invisible engine. Warehouses, hidden inside residential areas, stacked with everything from bread, to milk to toothpaste and cooking oil, sometimes even luggage and electronics. But Blinket did not always bet this heavily on dark stores. In fact, one of the first things that happened after Zomato acquired the company in 2022 was

a cutback. Blinket closed underperforming warehouses to improve margins. The focus then was on survival, not expansion. By the end of that year, though, the strategy flipped. Blinket began aggressively adding stores. Back in 2024, analysts described the company's approach as a land grab. At that time, the top eight cities accounted for 90% of Blinkets business, with Delhi NCR alone contributing to over 40% of gross order value and about a third of its total

stores. The CEO, Albinder Dinsa, even suggested on an earnings call that each of India's top four or five metros could eventually sustain 500 dog stores each. At the time, he admitted that some warehouses may take longer than the average two months to break even. But Blinket had already turned profitable in March 2024. It was proof that the model could work at scale. So how do these dog stores actually function? You see, Blinket runs different dog store formats to balance speed and assortment.

Its standard stores about 2,000 to 3,000 square feet are the backbone, stalking 2,000 to 3,000 SKUs. The larger express stores can be 7 to 8,000 square feet, while the mother warehouses are over 20,000 square feet. This hub-in-spoke mix lets blinket scale quickly while keeping deliveries hyper-local. Every user is assigned to a polygon, a 5-kilometer radius that contains three or four stores. So when an order comes in, the app checks stock in real time and routes it to the nearest option. Sometimes, everything is sourced from a single store and other times the order is split,

which can stretch the delivery time to up to 30 minutes. Inside these warehouses, the workflow is engineered for speed, because grab items from shells optimized for fast turnover, they scan them, bag them, and then hand them over to a rider, often all in under three. minutes. The riders then cover the short distance to the customer. Behind the scenes, the larger mother warehouses on the city's edges keep all of these stores stopped. As of now, Blinket operates over 1,750 dark stores far ahead of its rivals. It is aiming for 2,000 by the end of this year, after adding 150 to 200 in just a single quarter. This density is Blinket's moot. But maintaining

nearly 2,000 dog stores is an expensive business. So to make it pay, Blinket needs more than just dog stores. It needs margins, which brings us to its newest pivot, the inventory gamble. Stay tuned for more on this. Since the beginning of this month, September 1st, Blinket made one of the boldest moves in its short history. It shifted to an inventory-led model. Until then, Blinket worked largely as a marketplace. Sellers listed their products. Blinket facilitated the transaction and the risk of unsold stock stayed with the supplier.

But under the new model, Blinket buys the goods itself, holds them inside its stock stores and sells them directly to its customers. On paper, the logic is simple. Owning the stock means Blinket will have more control over the supply chain. It can negotiate bulk discounts from suppliers, improving margins, and it also allows the company to guarantee better product availability. Fewer out-of-stock moments that restrict customers.

And because inventory is standardized across warehouses, picking and packing can be faster, making Blinkets' 10-minute promise more reliable. There is also an advertising advantage. Brands are more likely to pay for visibility when Blinket itself controls what's on the shelf, and that means a stronger revenue stream beyond commissions. But this shift also has to pay for visibility.

changes blinkets DNA itself. The company is no longer just a delivery platform. It is now a retailer, and that comes with new risks. Because every item on those shelves in the dark stores is money already spent. If demand forecasting is off, stock will sit idle. For fresh produce, that means spoilage. For non-grocery categories like electronics or luggage, it means dead stock eating up space in already cramped warehouses. Multiply this risk across. cost nearly 2,000 stores and thousands and thousands of SKUs and the stakes become clear. This is why Zomato has been pumping in capital into Blinket. In February this year alone, it was 1,500 crore rupees to push the aggressive expansion

and also to bankroll this transition and cover the cash intensity of holding this sort of inventory. But it also raises expectations. Shareholders will now want to see proof that margins improve in the market. enough to justify this risk. So the gamble now is that owning the shelves will give Blinket the leverage to match its scale with profitability. The danger is that the very shelves that it now owns could weigh it down. For now, Blinket's growth story is intact.

It dominates the market and its dock stores are firing at full capacity. But Quick Commerce is a fragile business. The same density that powers speed can magnify mistakes. and Blinkets' future will depend on whether it's new role as a retailer and not just as a delivery platform pays off. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of a subscriber-only offerings and a full subscription offers daily, long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague,

Nika Sharma, and edited by Rajiv Sien.