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Informist, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026

--Eternal: Seeing a lot of competitive intensity, discounting in market 

--CONTEXT: Comments by Eternal's management in post-earnings analyst concall 

--Eternal: Difficult to give near-term margin target due to mkt volatility 

--Eternal: Plan to continue investing in Bistro in a cautious way 

By Anand JC and Divya Moolayattil

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI – An increase in competitive intensity in the quick commerce space affected financials and store expansion plans of Blinkit operator Eternal Ltd. in the December quarter, its executives told analysts at a post-earnings conference call Wednesday. "For example, in the last quarter, we can see these freebies impacting our market share too much. And hence, we sort of sustained our pricing. But as you might have seen last week, we did drop a delivery charge in some markets because we saw some impact," an executive of the consumer-tech firm said.

For the December quarter, Eternal reported a consolidated net profit of INR 1.02 billion on revenue of INR 163.15 billion, with both beating analysts' expectations. Blinkit contributed just over 75% to the company's top line for the reporting quarter.

While the company is confident of meeting its margin targets going forward, it remains vigilant of the tactics deployed by its competitors, which include Swiggy Ltd.'s Instamart, Amazon, Reliance Industries Ltd.'s JioMart, Zepto, and the Tata group's Big Basket. 

Blinkit chief Albinder Singh Dhindsa said the company has so far not seen any meaningful impact from heightened competition on the quality of its business, its customers or its net order value market share, but noted that if such tactics start to hurt the business, the company would be compelled to respond, which could potentially affect margins.

"Overall, I think there's definitely an impact of competition. And it impacts our margins, it impacts our top-line growth, it impacts our store expansion plans, and various other things," Dhindsa said.

The competitive intensity is creating a 'volatile' environment, forcing Eternal to undertake interventions. Against this backdrop, the company is finding it difficult to give margin guidance for the short term. "I don't think we can just stay at the intervention and then hope that the competition also stays at the same thing. I think people will change. They will be more competitive and stay, and we will have to also respond to that," Dhindsa said.

Eternal feels Blinkit is the only platform in the quick commerce space which is "meaningfully" contributing to increasing the market size. "The competitive intensity is mostly showing up and taking share away. And that is why you see the pressure on growth. Usually, you will see much faster market growth and then all the players are also gaining share, but we are not seeing that in a competition," the company said.

Blinkit also operates a standalone food delivery service called Bistro, which focuses on fresh food typically in a 10-minute window. Here, Eternal feels the company is meeting demand of a customer looking for high quality food at the right price point.

"I think on that, we had conviction early, but I think as we continue to build the business, we are building more conviction on economics as well. And hence, at this point, our plan is to continue investing in this business in a sort of cautious way," an executive said. "And at some point, like Blinkit, if it becomes extremely clear that this is a profit-making business and margin visibility is high, then we may accelerate our expansion as well," he added.

Eternal Ltd. reported its earnings for the December quarter after the market closed. Wednesday, its shares closed 5.2% higher on the National Stock Exchange at INR 283.50.  

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

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