E-commerce and digital marketplaces: Follow one offering through the chain
Online marketplaces and apps linking sellers, payments, warehouses and delivery fleets
Follow one offering through the chain
A quick-commerce grocery order on Blinkit
Follow one quick-commerce basket from rented cloud servers and brand warehouses to a dark store and a rider at the door.
An app running on rented servers
₹644 crEternal IT and server costs, FY25Before anything moves, the app must answer in milliseconds: search, prices, stock at the nearest store and rider location. Eternal, Blinkit's parent, relies on rented cloud capacity; its IT support, server and communication costs rose 33% to ₹644 crore in 2024-25. Worldwide, three hyperscalers held about 63% of cloud infrastructure spending in early 2026, Synergy Research estimates.1,2
Constraint Sale-day spikes need spare capacity on demand, and one hyperscaler outage can stop checkout for every app hosted in that region. Cu CopperH₂O WaterDC Data centresData centres and cloudSoftware and IT servicesBrands sell, and Blinkit now buys
<₹1,000crEternal estimate, full inventory working capitalThe milk, biscuits and shampoo come from national brands and local dairies. Blinkit began as a marketplace for third-party sellers, but after Eternal became an Indian-owned and controlled company in 2025 it began moving to owning inventory itself, estimating that a fully inventory-led model would need under ₹1,000 crore of working capital.3
Constraint India's FDI rules bar foreign-owned marketplaces from holding inventory, so a platform's ownership structure decides its business model and margins. Mk Milk & dairyWh WheatSrf SurfactantsPET PET resinPP PolypropyleneFood and beverage processingHousehold and personal carePaid with a tap on UPI
24.07bnUPI transactions, September 2026At checkout many shoppers tap UPI, which moves money between bank accounts in seconds with no fee to the buyer. The rail handled 24.07 billion transactions worth ₹29.37 lakh crore in September 2026 alone, up 23% by volume in a year. Blinkit's average order was about ₹667 in 2024-25, a small basket UPI settles instantly.4,2
Constraint One rail carries most Indian online payments, so a UPI outage stalls checkout everywhere, and zero merchant fees leave little income to fund resilience. Finance: banking, insurance, marketsSoftware and IT servicesPicked in a dark store
2,751Blinkit dark stores, September 2026The order is picked in a dark store, a small closed-to-shoppers warehouse a short ride from the customer, restocked from larger mother warehouses. Blinkit ran 2,751 stores at the end of September 2026, adding 308 in that quarter alone, up from 1,301 in March 2025. It expects to cross 3,500 by March 2027.5,3,6
Constraint Needs scarce urban sites with power and cold rooms; reaching 3,500 means about 750 more stores in six months (calculated). St SteelLLDPE Polyethylene (LDPE, LLDPE)PCM Latent heat and cold storageDist Distribution grids, mini-grids and interconnectorsReal estateMachinery and equipmentA rider covers the last stretch
77 lakhgig workers in India, 2020-21A delivery partner on a two-wheeler, mostly petrol but increasingly electric, carries the bag the final stretch. Riders are gig workers paid per order. NITI Aayog estimated India had about 77 lakh gig workers in 2020-21 and projected 2.35 crore by 2029-30 (forecast), so their earnings, safety and social security are now a policy question.8
Constraint Speed needs a dense supply of riders; heat, rain, fuel prices and new social-security contributions from platforms all raise the cost of each order. Oil Crude oilLi LithiumICV Combustion road vehiclesEV Electric and hybrid vehiclesTransport and logisticsVehicles, ships, rail, aircraftThe app that ties it together
₹20,940crBlinkit order value, Jul-Sep 2026Blinkit's app joins all of this: it ranks products, sells ad slots to brands, routes the order and promises delivery in minutes. In July to September 2026 it handled ₹20,940 crore of net order value, up 79% on a year earlier, Eternal reported. Bain estimates quick commerce was already 16-17% of India's online retail in 2025.5,7
Constraint Margins are thin: Blinkit's adjusted EBITDA of ₹184 crore on ₹20,940 crore of orders in that quarter was under 1% (calculated). Software and IT servicesFinance: banking, insurance, marketsWholesale and retail tradeWhat the chain shows
Quick commerce rides on two Indian strengths, UPI and a vast gig workforce, but scarce urban sites and FDI rules on inventory decide who can profit.
Sources
- Cloud market share Q1 2026: AWS, Microsoft, Google battling in AI era (Synergy Research Group data) CRN Asia, 2026
- Eternal FY25 annual report highlights: Zomato and Blinkit MediaNama, 2025
- Eternal eyes 100% inventory play for Blinkit to improve margins Entrackr, 2025
- UPI transactions surge 23% to 24.07 billion in September: NPCI DD News (Prasar Bharati), reporting NPCI data, 2026
- Eternal Q2 results FY27: profit jumps 92% to ₹125 crore, revenue rises 78%; Blinkit adds 308 stores Kotak Neo, 2026
- Blinkit targets 3,500 stores by March 2027 Apparel Resources, 2026
- How India Shops Online 2026 Bain & Company and Flipkart, 2026
- Gig workforce expected to expand to 2.35 crore by 2029-30: NITI Aayog report Business Today (reporting NITI Aayog), 2022