New Delhi, July 21 (IANS) Eternal, the parent company of online food delivery platform Zomato, on Monday reported a massive 90 per cent year-on-year decline in consolidated net profit at Rs 25 crore in Q1 FY26, compared to Rs 253 crore in the same quarter last fiscal (Q1 FY25).

On the sequential basis (month-on-month), Zomato clocked 35.89 per cent drop in net profit, from Rs 39 crore in the Q4 FY25, according to its stock exchange filing.

The Zomato and Blinkit operator registered revenue from operations at Rs 7,167 crore, up around 70 per cent from Rs 4,206 crore a year ago.

On the profitability front, consolidated Adjusted EBITDA declined 42 per cent on-year to Rs 172 crore in Q1 FY26, “largely on account of the continuing investments in quick commerce and going-out”, the company said in its shareholders’ letter.

It was “partly offset by the improvement in food delivery Adjusted EBITDA margin (as a percentage of NOV) to 5.0 per cent from 3.9 per cent a year ago, said Eternal.

In its quick commerce business Blinkit, the margins improved from -2.4 per cent of net order value (NOV) in Q4 FY25 to -1.8 per cent despite continued investments in new store roll-outs and seasonal factors.

“We added 243 net new (Blinkit) stores this quarter, taking our store count to 1,544 stores by the end of the quarter. We are on track to get to 2,000 stores by Dec 2025,” said the company.

The NOV of its B2C businesses grew 55 per cent YoY (16 per cent QoQ) to Rs 20,183 crore in Q1 FY26.

“This was the first quarter where our quick commerce NOV exceeded food delivery NOV for the full quarter. On an annualised basis, we are now at almost $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,” said Eternal.

Eternal CEO Deepinder Goyal said that “the YoY growth is likely to bottom out now as we recover from the demand slowdown we started seeing in late 2024”.

“For FY26, it looks unlikely that the business will deliver a 20 per cent+ NOV growth but we should be north of 15 per cent and hopefully trending towards 20 per cent YoY growth in FY27,” said Goyal.

Going forward, the company will only be disclosing NOV (and will discontinue disclosing GOV), as “we believe that NOV is a better measure of growth in our B2C businesses including food delivery”.

Earlier this month, Eternal appointed Aditya Mangla as CEO of its food ordering and delivery business for a period of two years.

“I am super excited to see how Aditya shapes the future of Zomato over the next two years, until it is time to hand over the baton to someone else,” said Goyal in the shareholders’ letter.

–IANS

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