From cabbage to caps: Inside Blinkit’s game plan to deliver anything

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₹28-55) or a packet of milk ( ₹27-106). Products beyond grocery can help increase the average order value on the platform. A Manyavar kurta set, for instance, sells at ₹2,999.

This, in turn, has implications for the company’s profitability. Blink Commerce Pvt. Ltd, as the company is legally known, continues to bleed, with losses widening 17% to ₹1191.5 crore in 2022-23 compared to the year ago.

Well, how the company executes with its strategy of delivering anything also has implications for Zomato Ltd. The food delivery company, hungry for growth, acquired Blinkit in August 2022. How will the acquisition pan out? More on this later.

First, let’s rewind a bit to understand Blinkit’s past. It’s a story of pivots. In 2013, IIT Bombay graduate Saurabh Kumar founded Onenumber, a company providing on-demand delivery service that fulfilled orders from pharmacies, grocery stores and restaurants.

Dhindsa, a former IIT Delhi alumnus, joined Kumar in 2014. In 2014, Onenumber rebranded to Grofers, positioning itself as a hyperlocal delivery marketplace with a 90 minute delivery promise. In its early days, Grofers was backed by marquee investors such as Tiger Global, SoftBank and Sequoia Capital.

While the company grew rapidly between 2014 and 2015, scaling its presence across multiple cities, it soon hit a roadblock. The grocery bubble burst around 2016 and most companies in the sector realized that express deliveries weren’t easy. The unit economics simply didn’t add up.

Grofers realized that its loyal customers didn’t really care about speed. Back then, its customers used the platform for monthly stock up. The company pivoted from just catering to the elite.