Ask most people how Zomato and Swiggy make money, and they’ll say “commission on food orders.” That answer was accurate in 2018. It barely scratches the surface today. Zomato’s parent company now trades on the stock exchange as Eternal Limited and runs four separate businesses under one roof. Swiggy went public in November 2024 and now leans almost as heavily on 10-minute grocery delivery as it does on food. Understanding the real Zomato Swiggy business model in 2026 means understanding quick commerce, B2B supply chains, dining-out platforms, and subscription economics not just delivery fees.

This article breaks down exactly how both companies earn revenue, compares their FY26 financial performance line by line, and explains why brands, investors, and data teams increasingly rely on structured data rather than quarterly press releases to actually keep up with this market.

Quick answer: Zomato (now under parent company Eternal Limited) earns revenue from four segments food delivery, Blinkit (quick commerce), Hyperpure (B2B restaurant supply), and District (dining out and events). Swiggy earns primarily from food delivery commissions and fees, Instamart (quick commerce), Swiggy Genie, Dineout, and its Swiggy One subscription. Both companies now generate more of their growth from quick commerce than from their original food delivery business, which has fundamentally reshaped how each company makes money.

Zomato and Swiggy at a Glance

Before comparing revenue models, it helps to see the two companies side by side as they stand today, not as they were when they first launched.

Both companies started life doing one thing restaurant discovery in Zomato’s case, food delivery logistics in Swiggy’s and have since turned into multi-business platforms competing on nearly identical fronts: food, groceries, dining, and local convenience.

From Zomato to Eternal: The Corporate Structure Behind the Brand You Know

A lot of comparison articles online still describe “Zomato” as a single business. That stopped being accurate in 2025. In February 2025, the company announced plans to rename its listed parent entity to Eternal Limited, and shareholders formally approved the change the following month. The Zomato app, brand, and consumer experience stayed exactly the same what changed was the corporate structure sitting behind it.

Eternal Limited now operates as a holding company for four distinct businesses, each run by its own leadership team with its own profit-and-loss responsibility: Zomato (food delivery), Blinkit (quick commerce), Hyperpure (B2B supply for restaurants and retailers), and District (dining out, movies, events, and ticketing). This decentralized, multi-CEO structure is a deliberate strategic choice. It lets Blinkit compete like a focused quick-commerce startup against Zepto and Instamart, while Zomato’s food delivery team can optimize purely for restaurant partnerships and delivery economics, without one business’s spending decisions distorting the other’s numbers.

The scale of this shift became obvious in early 2026, when founder Deepinder Goyal moved from Group CEO to Vice Chairman, handing the top job to Albinder Dhindsa previously the CEO of Blinkit. That leadership change is a signal in itself: the company’s center of gravity has moved from food delivery to quick commerce, and its next chapter will likely be written by the executive who built that business.

Swiggy’s Business Model: One Platform, Four Ways to Order

Swiggy’s approach looks superficially similar food delivery plus quick commerce plus a couple of adjacent services but the underlying philosophy is different. Rather than spinning out separate branded businesses with independent leadership, Swiggy has kept most of its verticals under one consumer app and one unified management structure, betting on cross-selling and shared logistics infrastructure as its core advantage.

Food delivery is still Swiggy’s most mature and most profitable segment. Instamart, its 10-to-20-minute grocery and daily-essentials arm, has become the company’s primary growth engine, expanding faster than food delivery in almost every recent quarter. Swiggy Genie handles point-to-point pickup-and-drop errands, and Swiggy Dineout covers restaurant discovery, table reservations, and dining offers Swiggy’s answer to Zomato’s dining-out business, now folded partly into what Swiggy calls its “Out-of-Home” or OOH segment. A unified Swiggy One membership ties these services together with delivery discounts and platform-wide perks, encouraging users to order groceries and food from the same app rather than switching between Swiggy and a quick-commerce specialist like Zepto.

How Eternal (Zomato) Makes Money: Revenue Streams Explained

Food delivery: commission, delivery fees, and advertising

Zomato’s original business still works the way most people assume: restaurants pay a commission on every order placed through the app, typically reported to fall somewhere in the mid-teens to mid-twenties percentage range, though exact rates vary by city, restaurant tier, and individually negotiated contracts and are not publicly standardized. On top of commission, Zomato collects delivery fees from customers, which flex with distance, demand, and time of day, plus advertising revenue from restaurants that pay to appear higher in search results or in “recommended” placements. In Q4 FY26, Zomato’s food delivery business reported a Net Order Value of roughly ₹9,757 crore, up 18.8% year on year a healthy, if unspectacular, growth rate for what is now the company’s most mature segment.

Blinkit: the quick commerce engine now driving the group

Blinkit is where Eternal’s real growth story lives. Since Q1 FY26, Blinkit has shifted from a marketplace/commission model to an inventory-led (first-party) model, meaning it now buys and holds stock directly rather than purely taking a commission on third-party sellers’ goods. This accounting shift is the main reason Eternal’s headline revenue numbers jumped so sharply in FY26 it now recognizes the full value of goods sold, not just a commission slice.

The underlying operating momentum is real regardless of the accounting change. In Q4 FY26, Blinkit reported a Net Order Value of ₹14,386 crore, up 95% year on year, delivered through 2,243 dark stores the largest quick-commerce store network in India at that point while adding roughly 216 net new stores in a single quarter. More importantly for the long-term investment case, Blinkit posted an adjusted EBITDA profit of ₹37 crore in Q4 FY26, compared with a ₹178 crore loss in the same quarter a year earlier. That flip from loss to profit, at this scale, is arguably the single most important data point in the entire Zomato Swiggy business model comparison right now, because it answers a question the whole industry has been asking for years: can 10-minute delivery actually turn a profit?

Hyperpure: the B2B business few people talk about

Hyperpure supplies restaurants, cloud kitchens, and increasingly retail outlets with ingredients, packaging, and kitchen supplies, sourced and delivered through Eternal’s existing logistics network. It’s a quieter, lower-margin business compared to Blinkit, but it deepens Eternal’s relationship with restaurant partners and gives the company a second revenue stream from the same merchant base it already serves through food delivery a classic platform-economics move that most surface-level comparison articles skip entirely.

District: dining out, movies, and events

District is Eternal’s answer to the “going-out” economy restaurant reservations, dining discounts, movie tickets, and live events, essentially replacing and expanding what used to be Zomato’s dining-out and Zomato Gold features. District posted Net Order Value growth of 47% year on year in Q4 FY26 and 42% for the full fiscal year, though management has been upfront that this business is naturally lumpy quarter to quarter Q1 tracks the IPL cricket season, Q3 tracks festive and event season, and any given quarter’s growth rate depends heavily on the entertainment release calendar rather than steady, linear demand.

How Swiggy Makes Money: Revenue Streams Explained

Food delivery: commission, fees, and surge pricing

Swiggy’s food delivery revenue comes from a similar mix to Zomato’s: restaurant commission, plus customer-facing charges. Publicly reported fee structures suggest a delivery fee ranging roughly from ₹20 to ₹100 depending on distance and demand, a service fee in the region of 5% to 10% of order value, and a small additional charge on orders under roughly ₹250. Surge pricing pushes delivery fees higher during peak hours, bad weather, or unusually high demand windows a lever that disproportionately boosts revenue during exactly the periods when delivery costs are highest for the company too. This is Swiggy’s most profitable segment by a clear margin: in Q3 FY26, food delivery posted a segment result of ₹282 crore, up from ₹193 crore a year earlier, with adjusted EBITDA margin turning positive at 0.7% of GOV for the first time a milestone the company has described as proof that its core business has reached structural maturity and can now help fund Instamart’s expansion.

Instamart: the growth engine with a profitability problem

Instamart operates largely as a marketplace, listing FMCG brands’ products in its dark stores and earning commission reportedly in the 8% to 15% range for grocery items, higher for non-grocery categories plus per-order delivery fees. The growth numbers here are the most eye-catching in Swiggy’s entire portfolio: Q4 FY26 GOV reached ₹7,881 crore, up 68.8% year on year, with average order value climbing 32.8% to ₹700, reflecting a shift toward larger baskets and higher-value, non-grocery purchases.

The profitability picture is less settled. Instamart’s contribution margin improved to -1.8% of GOV in Q4 FY26 (and to -1.1% on a monthly basis by March 2026), with adjusted EBITDA losses narrowing to ₹858 crore for the quarter. That’s genuine progress, but it’s still a loss-making business competing head-to-head against a rival, Blinkit, that has already turned EBITDA-positive. Notably, Swiggy’s Instamart has also expanded its dark-store network far more cautiously than Blinkit adding just 7 net new stores in Q4 FY26 against Blinkit’s 216 a sign that Swiggy is currently prioritizing unit economics over raw footprint growth.

Genie, Dineout, and Swiggy One

Swiggy Genie charges a flat or distance-based fee for pickup-and-drop errands, functioning more like a logistics-as-a-service add-on than a core revenue driver. Dineout monetizes through restaurant commissions on discovery and table bookings, similar to Zomato’s dining-out model, and sits inside what Swiggy now reports as its “Out-of-Home” segment which delivered its first full year of profitability in FY26, a genuinely strong result that gets far less attention than Instamart’s headline numbers. Swiggy One, the platform’s unified subscription, bundles free or discounted delivery across food and Instamart orders with occasional dining perks, functioning as a retention tool designed to keep high-frequency users inside the Swiggy ecosystem rather than splitting their orders across Zomato, Blinkit, and Zepto.

Zomato vs Swiggy Business Model: Side-by-Side Comparison

That last row matters more than it looks. Eternal reports Net Order Value while Swiggy reports Gross Order Value two metrics that are calculated differently and aren’t directly interchangeable. Treating them as apples-to-apples, which a surprising number of comparison articles do, is one of the fastest ways to draw the wrong conclusion about who is actually bigger in a given category.

Financial Performance: Eternal vs Swiggy in FY26

Both companies file quarterly results, and both told very different stories in fiscal year 2026.

*Eternal’s headline revenue growth is significantly inflated by Blinkit’s shift to an inventory-led accounting model in Q1 FY26; on a like-for-like adjusted basis, Eternal’s Q4 FY26 revenue growth was closer to 64% year on year.

Read together, the numbers tell a clear story: Eternal has crossed into consistent, if still modest, group-level profitability, driven almost entirely by Blinkit’s newfound EBITDA profitability. Swiggy is moving in the same direction losses have narrowed for multiple consecutive quarters and its food delivery segment is now solidly profitable but Instamart remains a meaningful drag, and the company has not committed to a firm timeline for group-level breakeven. Both companies are, in effect, using their original food delivery business to subsidize an expensive quick-commerce war that is still being fought on the ground in dark stores across the country.

Market Share: Who’s Winning Food Delivery and Quick Commerce

Neither Zomato nor Swiggy officially publishes precise market share figures, so any number you see including the ones below comes from third-party trackers and analyst estimates rather than company disclosures. Treat these as directional, not exact.

In food delivery, the market has effectively consolidated into a two-player race, with Zomato holding a modest but consistent lead. In quick commerce, the picture is more crowded and more volatile Blinkit currently leads by most trackers’ estimates, but Zepto and Instamart are locked in a close fight for second place, and large retail-backed entrants like Amazon Now and Flipkart Minutes have scaled fast enough in 2025 and 2026 to complicate what used to be framed as a three-horse race.

Two Different Roads to the Stock Market

Zomato went public in July 2021, becoming one of India’s first major new-age internet companies to list, raising roughly ₹9,375 crore in an IPO priced at ₹76 per share a listing that arrived years before the company had a clear path to profitability, and one that was met with plenty of early skepticism about food delivery unit economics.

Swiggy took a very different, more patient route. It stayed private for a decade, repeatedly delaying its IPO while investors like Invesco and Baron Capital marked its valuation up and down through 2023 and 2024 from roughly $5.5 billion at one low point to over $13 billion at a high point before finally listing in November 2024. The IPO raised around ₹11,327 crore (roughly $1.35 billion) at a price band of ₹371–390 per share, valuing the company at close to $11.3 billion, notably below the $15 billion it had once targeted. Swiggy’s decision to focus on narrowing losses and building out Instamart before going public, rather than listing early and fixing profitability afterward the way Zomato did, is one of the clearest strategic differences between the two companies’ overall playbooks.

The Real Strategic Difference: Breadth vs. Focus

Strip away the financial tables and the two companies’ philosophies diverge in a way that matters more than any single quarter’s numbers. Eternal has chosen structural breadth four separately managed businesses, each with its own CEO, competing in its own category on its own terms, loosely connected by shared brand trust and, increasingly, shared logistics infrastructure. Swiggy has chosen tighter integration fewer standalone brands, one consumer app, one management structure, betting that cross-selling food, grocery, and errands to the same loyal user base beats running four independent businesses under one roof.

Neither approach is obviously correct yet. Eternal’s decentralized model let Blinkit reach EBITDA profitability faster, arguably because it could be run with startup-like focus rather than competing internally for resources with food delivery. Swiggy’s integrated model gives it a genuine cross-sell advantage Swiggy One users who already trust the app for food are a warmer audience for Instamart than a cold customer acquired independently but that same integration makes it harder to isolate and fix an underperforming segment without dragging down group-level numbers, which is exactly what’s happening with Instamart today.

Why This Business Model Battle Matters Beyond the Stock Market

If you run an FMCG brand, a restaurant chain, a cloud kitchen, or an investment fund, the Zomato-Swiggy rivalry isn’t just background business news it directly shapes your pricing decisions, your expansion plans, and your competitive positioning. Every time Blinkit cuts commission to win a category, every time Instamart raises delivery fees in a specific city, every time a restaurant’s Zomato ranking shifts because of a new ad spend threshold, that’s a signal a competing brand can act on if they can see it in time.

The problem is that neither company publishes this operational detail in a quarterly earnings call. Commission changes, menu pricing shifts, dark-store expansion, and promotional patterns show up first on the live platforms themselves, restaurant by restaurant, city by city, hour by hour. That’s precisely the gap that structured food data scraping and a reliable food data api are built to close turning what’s publicly visible on the apps into a dataset a pricing team, a category manager, or an analyst can actually query.

How Brands and Investors Track This Market With Real Data

Consider a mid-size QSR chain trying to decide whether to renegotiate its Zomato commission or shift marketing spend toward Blinkit’s grocery-adjacent snacking category. A quarterly earnings report tells them Blinkit is growing fast it doesn’t tell them what a competitor’s combo pricing looks like in their specific city this week, or whether a rival cloud kitchen just dropped prices on the exact dish they’re about to launch. That level of detail only comes from continuously monitoring the live platforms, which is where a dedicated zomato data api or ongoing zomato data scraping pipeline earns its keep replacing manual spot-checks with a live feed of pricing, ratings, and availability data across thousands of outlets.

The same logic applies at the item level. A brand deciding whether to launch a new menu category doesn’t just need to know that a competitor exists it needs to know exactly what that competitor charges for a similar dish, how often they run discounts, and how their menu has changed over the last quarter. That’s the kind of granular, dish-by-dish detail that restaurant menu data scraping is built to capture, and it’s a level of resolution that no earnings call or industry report will ever provide. Investors doing diligence on quick-commerce or food-delivery stocks increasingly use the same approach building an alternative-data view of dark-store density, delivery-time consistency, or menu-price inflation to sanity-check what management says on an earnings call, a practice Foodspark supports through both ready-made datasets and custom API feeds tailored to a specific research question.

If your team is building this kind of pipeline for the first time, our how to scrape zomato data guide walks through the practical steps, and our deeper piece on scraping zomato restaurant data for food intelligence covers how to turn that raw data into an actual market-intelligence workflow rather than a one-off spreadsheet. For a broader look at what’s possible with structured restaurant data specifically, our earlier post on Zomato restaurant data and how brands analyze food market trends is a useful next read.

Common Mistakes Businesses Make When Analyzing Zomato and Swiggy

The most frequent error is comparing Swiggy’s GOV directly to Zomato’s NOV as if they measure the same thing they don’t, and doing so routinely produces a distorted picture of which company is actually “bigger” in a given quarter. A second common mistake is reading Eternal’s headline FY26 revenue growth at face value without accounting for Blinkit’s shift to inventory-led accounting, which inflated the reported number well beyond the underlying operating growth. A third mistake, more relevant to brands than analysts, is relying on a single manual check of competitor pricing rather than continuous monitoring commission structures, delivery fees, and menu prices on both platforms change often enough that a snapshot taken once a quarter is close to useless for real pricing strategy by the time it’s acted on.

What’s Next: Expert Outlook on the Zomato–Swiggy Rivalry

Analyst sentiment on the two companies has diverged noticeably through 2026. Eternal’s shift to Blinkit profitability has been read by several brokerages as evidence that quick commerce, at sufficient scale, is a genuinely viable business rather than a permanently subsidized customer-acquisition exercise Eternal’s own management has projected Blinkit’s order value could grow more than four-fold over the next three years even as growth rates naturally moderate off a larger base. Swiggy’s outlook has been more mixed: some brokerages, including Jefferies, raised their EBITDA loss estimates for Instamart and trimmed earnings projections for FY27 and FY28 after Swiggy’s management declined to commit to a firm group-level breakeven timeline. Reasonable analysts disagree on how this plays out some see Swiggy’s more cautious, unit-economics-first approach to dark-store expansion as prudent risk management, while others see it as a company ceding ground to a faster-moving Blinkit at exactly the wrong moment in the category’s growth curve. Both readings are defensible with the data available today, and the honest answer is that neither company’s long-term quick-commerce economics are fully settled yet.

Key Takeaways

• Zomato’s food delivery brand now sits inside Eternal Limited, a four-business holding company also running Blinkit, Hyperpure, and District.
• Swiggy keeps its businesses food delivery, Instamart, Genie, Dineout under one unified app and management structure rather than separate brands.
• Blinkit turned adjusted-EBITDA profitable in Q4 FY26; Instamart is narrowing losses but is not yet profitable at the same pace.
• Eternal reports Net Order Value (NOV); Swiggy reports Gross Order Value (GOV) the two are not directly comparable.
• Quick commerce is now the primary growth driver for both companies, ahead of their original food delivery businesses.
• Tracking this market in real time requires live, structured data not quarterly earnings reports alone.

Zomato vs Swiggy Business Model: FAQs

What is the main difference between Zomato’s and Swiggy’s business models?

Zomato’s parent company, Eternal Limited, runs four separately managed businesses food delivery, Blinkit, Hyperpure, and District each with its own leadership. Swiggy keeps food delivery, Instamart, Genie, and Dineout under one unified app and management team, prioritizing cross-selling over standalone brand independence.

Is Zomato the same company as Eternal?

Not quite. Eternal Limited is the listed parent company; Zomato is now the brand name specifically for the food delivery business, one of four units Eternal operates alongside Blinkit, Hyperpure, and District.

How does Zomato make money?

Zomato earns commission from restaurants on each order, delivery fees from customers, and advertising revenue from restaurants paying for better visibility. Its parent company, Eternal, also earns from Blinkit’s quick commerce sales, Hyperpure’s B2B supply business, and District’s dining and events bookings.

How does Swiggy make money?

Swiggy earns restaurant commission, delivery and service fees, and surge-pricing revenue from food orders, plus commission and delivery fees from Instamart grocery orders, fees from Swiggy Genie errands, and commission from Dineout restaurant bookings.

Which is more profitable, Zomato or Swiggy?

As of FY26, Eternal (Zomato’s parent) is consolidated-profitable, reporting ₹366 crore in full-year net profit, driven largely by Blinkit reaching EBITDA profitability. Swiggy remains loss-making at the group level, though its losses have narrowed for several consecutive quarters and its food delivery segment is independently profitable.

Is Blinkit or Instamart bigger?

By most third-party estimates, Blinkit holds a larger share of the quick-commerce market than Instamart, and it reached adjusted EBITDA profitability before Instamart did. Neither company officially discloses exact market share, so estimates vary by tracker.

When did Swiggy go public?

Swiggy listed on the NSE and BSE on November 13, 2024, after an IPO that raised approximately ₹11,327 crore (around $1.35 billion), valuing the company at roughly $11.3 billion.

Why did Zomato rename itself Eternal?

Zomato’s shareholders approved renaming the parent company to Eternal Limited in March 2025 to better reflect its expansion beyond food delivery into quick commerce, B2B supply, and dining-out while keeping the Zomato consumer brand and app unchanged.

What is the difference between GOV and NOV?

Gross Order Value (GOV), used by Swiggy, and Net Order Value (NOV), used by Eternal, are calculated differently and are not directly interchangeable. Comparing them at face value is a common source of error when analyzing the two companies side by side.

How can businesses track Zomato and Swiggy pricing and menu changes?

Because neither company publishes real-time pricing or menu data publicly beyond their live apps, businesses typically rely on structured data services such as ongoing Zomato data scraping, restaurant menu data scraping, or a dedicated data API to monitor competitor pricing, ratings, and menu changes continuously rather than through manual spot-checks.

Is web scraping restaurant data from Zomato or Swiggy legal?

Data collection should always be carried out in line with applicable data protection laws and each platform’s terms of use. Foodspark structures its data collection with compliance in mind and works with clients to align usage with their specific legal and business requirements.

Will Swiggy become profitable like Zomato?

Swiggy’s food delivery and Out-of-Home segments are already profitable, and group-level losses have narrowed for multiple consecutive quarters. Whether Swiggy reaches full group profitability depends largely on Instamart closing its contribution-margin gap with Blinkit, and management has not yet committed to a firm timeline for that milestone.

Ready to Track This Market Instead of Just Reading About It?

Quarterly earnings calls tell you what already happened. Live restaurant, pricing, and menu data tells you what’s happening right now, in your city, against your specific competitors. Foodspark builds that data layer as a managed service, a ready-to-use dataset, or a direct API so your pricing, expansion, and category teams aren’t working off a three-month-old snapshot of a market that changes weekly.