Zomato to invest Rs 400 Cr in Blinkit and Zomato Entertainment

Foodtech major Zomato is pumping Rs 300 crore ($36 million) in its quick commerce arm Blinkit. The infusion will help the platform to beef up its offering against two competitors: Swiggy Instamart and Zepto.

Besides Blinkit, Zomato is also set to invest another Rs 100 crore ($12 million) in Zomato Entertainment, a subsidiary that controls the firm’s live events and ticketing businesses.

The board at Zomato has passed a resolution to invest Rs 300 crore in Blinkit Commerce and Rs 100 crore in Zomato Entertainment, its regulatory filing accessed from the Registrar of Companies shows.

With this infusion, Zomato has invested Rs 2,300 crore ($277 million) in Blinkit since its acquisition in August 2022. BlinkIt (formerly Grofers) was acquired by the food delivery major in an all-stock deal for Rs 4,477 crore ($568 million).

Fresh capital allocation comes soon after Zomato’s Q4 results which revealed that Blinkit managed to achieve EBITDA profitability with 19.4% growth in its revenue to Rs 769 crore in Q4 FY24. Overall, Zomato posted Rs 175 crore profit in the last quarter.

Over the past couple of years, the competition in quick commerce is getting more fierce. In late 2021, Swiggy announced that it will invest $700 million in its quick commerce business Instamart. Since then, Zepto has scooped up around $430 million across three tranches and is planning to raise a new round. Meanwhile, e-commerce major Flipkart is also eying the quick commerce space. The Walmart-owned firm recently raised $350 million from search giant Google.

Recently, analysts at Goldman Sachs had said that Blinkit is more valuable than Zomato. In an interview with Entrackr, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder of Zomato’s early backer Info Edge, also said that Blinkit is going to be fairly large.