Eternal posts Rs 25 cr consolidated net profit in Q1

New Delhi, Jul 21 (PTI) Food delivery and quick commerce firm Eternal, which owns the Zomato and Blinkit brands, on Monday reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 25 crore for the June quarter, as continuing investments in quick commerce and going-out businesses weighed down on its bottomline.

The company, which re-branded itself as Eternal in March, had reported a net profit of Rs 253 crore in the year-ago period.

In a regulatory filing, Eternal said the results are not comparable with the corresponding quarter last year on account of the acquisition of Orbgen Technologies Pvt Ltd and Wasteland Entertainment Pvt Ltd, holding the 'movies ticketing' and the 'events' businesses, respectively, from One 97 Communications Ltd, (Paytm's parent firm) which was completed in August 2024.

During the quarter under review, Eternal's revenue from operations stood at Rs 7,167 crore, up from Rs 4,206 crore a year ago, the company said in a regulatory filing, adding that, for the first time, its quick commerce net order value (NOV) exceeded food delivery NOV for the full quarter.

The company's total expenses also jumped to Rs 7,433 crore, from Rs 4,203 crore in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal year.

The reporting segments for the group include India food ordering and delivery; hyperpure supplies (B2B business); quick commerce; going out; and all other segments (residual).

In the letter to shareholders, Eternal Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Akshant Goyal said on the profitability front, consolidated adjusted EBITDA declined 42 per cent year-on-year to Rs 172 crore in Q1FY26, largely on account of the continuing investments in quick commerce and going-out, which were partly offset by the improvement in food delivery adjusted EBITDA margin as a percentage of net order vale (NOV) to 5 per cent from 3.9 per cent a year ago.

"NOV of our B2C businesses grew 55 per cent YoY (16 per cent QoQ) to Rs 20,183 crore in Q1FY26. This was the first quarter where our quick commerce NOV exceeded food delivery NOV for the full quarter," Akshant said.

He further said, "On an annualised basis, we are now at almost USD 10 billion of annual NOV across our B2C businesses and quick commerce is now our largest B2C business contributing to almost half of this annualised NOV. Our B2B business Hyperpure's revenue grew 89 per cent Y-o-Y (25 per cent QoQ). We expect de-growth in this business in the next few quarters." Eternal CEO Deepinder Goyal informed shareholders that going-out is now a Rs 8,000-crore annualised NOV business that is about 20 per cent of the size of its food delivery and quick commerce businesses.

Responding to the reason behind increase in the adjusted EBITDA loss in the 'others' segment, Deepinder said the increase in quarterly losses is largely on account of investments in the 10-minute food delivery service Bistro, where the kitchen infrastructure is owned and operated by Blinkit.

"We have 38 such kitchens live in Delhi-NCR and Bangalore currently. Early data is encouraging as the kitchens are generating incremental demand without cannibalising the Zomato business. Through Bistro, we are tapping into two demand pockets so far unaddressed by Zomato -- a) customers looking for high quality but low cost meals (think customers who buy from home chefs), and b) customers looking for snacky food in 10 mins. While customer side traction is pretty strong, we need to work and find answers to making money in this business," he informed shareholders.

Blinkit CEO Albinder Dhindsa said it added 243 net new stores this quarter, taking the store count to 1,544 by the end of the quarter.

"We are on track to get to 2,000 stores by December 2025. We also added 0.4 million sq ft of warehousing space and now operate over 5.6 million sq ft of warehousing space across the country," he stated.

The Blinkit CEO further informed shareholders that the long-term profitability of the business is not a concern.

"As far as near-term is concerned, it does feel like percentage margins have bottomed out and, if the competitive environment stays the same, we should see margins getting better from here as a large number of stores that we opened in the past 12 months will mature. In fact, even the absolute losses should come down from hereon. But the margin improvement journey may not be linear and there could be some bumps along the way if the competitive intensity goes-up again for whatever reason," Albinder said.

Asked about Eternal becoming an Indian Owned and Controlled Company (IOCC), and the plan for the transition to inventory ownership in quick commerce, the company's CFO Akshant said the cap on foreign shareholding (at 49.5 per cent) is in place.

"As of June 30, 2025, the actual foreign share-holding is at 43 pe cent. We will be gradually transitioning our quick commerce business from a marketplace model to inventory ownership over the next 2-3 quarters. Our teams are well prepared for this transition and we expect to start working with brands directly without any disruption to the business," he added.

Akshant further informed that as an outcome of this transition, Eternal will also see shrinkage in Hyperpure's non-restaurant business as most of the B2B buyers in that business were sellers on its quick commerce platform.

On the leadership change in the food delivery business Zomato, with Aditya Mangla taking over as the new CEO, Deepinder said only Zomato is at a point where rotational leadership makes sense so far.

Looking ahead, at Zomato, we are working on grooming product and technology-first operators to lead our businesses in the future. This is already in motion, not just at the top, but across levels. The result is a leadership pipeline that is wider, deeper, and built for the next few decades, not just the next quarter, Deepinder said. PTI RSN RKL TRB