Eternal (Zomato) Q1 Results FY26: Blinkit Drives Growth, But Profits Take a Hit {update}

Why the sharp drop? Simple. Costs blew up. Total expenses were ₹7,433 crore, up 77% year-on-year. More delivery costs, more ads, more tech, more stores. The company is throwing money at growth, and it shows. Adjusted EBITDA also slipped 42%, landing at ₹172 crore.

Now, the part everyone’s watching: Blinkit.

Also Read: Zomato Introduces 15-Minute Food Delivery Service

This segment is on fire. Revenue from Blinkit came in at ₹2,400 crore. That’s a 155% jump. Even bigger news—Blinkit’s order volume (₹9,203 crore) was higher than Zomato’s food delivery orders (₹8,967 crore). This is the first time that’s happened.

They’re not slowing down either. Eternal added 243 new Blinkit stores in just one quarter. Total count? 1,544. They want to hit 2,000 by the end of this year. But it’s not all wins. Blinkit is still losing money. It burned ₹162 crore this quarter. That’s a bit better than the ₹178 crore loss in Q4, but still deep in the red.

Margins are starting to look better, though. Losses as a percentage of orders dropped from 2.4% to 1.8%. Not huge, but heading in the right direction.

Over in food delivery, Zomato is still holding its ground. Revenue touched ₹2,261 crore, a growth of around 16–17%. More people are ordering too—monthly users jumped from 20.3 million to 22.9 million in just three months. That’s a solid uptick. EBITDA margin also moved from 3.9% to about 5%, which is decent progress.

Hyperpure, their B2B platform, saw ₹2,295 crore in revenue. That’s up 89%. The ‘Going Out’ part of the business wasn’t as lucky. It shrank from ₹229 crore to ₹207 crore. Not a huge fall, but clearly not the focus right now.

Here’s what gives Eternal some breathing room: cash. Lots of it. ₹18,857 crore in reserves. That’s a serious cushion. They’re pouring some of that into Blinkit, a kitchen project called Bistro, and smaller ideas like District and Greening India. These aren’t making money yet, but the team says they expect losses of around ₹150 crore from them this year. All part of the plan, apparently.

CEO Deepinder Goyal is staying confident. He believes food delivery is still in a good place and doesn’t see any major threat from new players. Blinkit’s CEO Albinder Dhindsa is focused on getting margins under control as new stores start performing better.

The stock? It bounced up nearly 7.5% after the results. Closed somewhere around ₹275–₹277. Clearly, the market liked what it saw, even with that profit drop.

Bottom line: Eternal is growing like crazy, especially through Blinkit. But they’re spending just as fast. Profits are hurting now, but the team is playing the long game. They’re betting big on scaling up, and investors—for now—seem okay with that.

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