Most food delivery apps compete on speed and restaurant variety. But one company quietly shifted its zomato business model. And most people didn’t even notice.
Zomato started in 2010 as a restaurant discovery tool. You could browse menus, check ratings, and decide where to eat. Fast forward to today, and that same company is unrecognizable. In February 2025, the parent rebranded to Eternal Limited. It now operates across over 800 cities in India. In FY26, 109 million people transacted through its platforms, generating over $10 billion in revenue.
Here’s the thing: food delivery is no longer the main story. Blinkit, the quick commerce arm, now pulls in 77.5% of total revenue. Full year FY26 revenue hit ₹54,364 crore, up 169% year over year. Then there’s the leadership shakeup. After 18 years, founder Deepinder Goyal stepped down as MD & CEO. He wanted to pursue “significantly higher-risk exploration” outside public company constraints. Blinkit founder Albinder Dhindsa took over as Group CEO.
What Is Zomato?
Zomato is a food delivery and restaurant discovery platform. It operates as a brand under Eternal Limited, the holding company formed after the company’s 2025 rebrand. The zomato business model connects customers, restaurants, and delivery partners in one place.
Users browse menus, read reviews, order food, or book tables at local restaurants. Restaurant partners, in turn, get visibility, direct customer engagement, and a delivery network they can rely on. As of the latest data, the platform serves over 30 million monthly active users and processes more than 2.2 million orders every single day.
The roots go back to 2008. Two IIT graduates, Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, launched Foodiebay: a simple online directory that digitized restaurant menus. The idea was straightforward: replace scattered paper menus with a centralized, searchable platform. That concept evolved into Zomato and eventually into a multi-vertical operation spanning food delivery, quick commerce, B2B supply, and events.
How Does Zomato Work?
Zomato runs on a multi-vertical operating model that goes far beyond food delivery. Under its parent company Eternal Limited, the business now spans four distinct verticals. These include Zomato for food delivery, Blinkit for quick commerce, Hyperpure for B2B supply, and District for events and experiences. Each vertical operates with its own revenue mechanics, but they all feed into one consolidated platform. Eternal posted ₹54,364 crore in FY26 revenue, up 169% year-over-year. By Q1 FY27, quarterly revenue hit ₹20,211 crore, growing 182% year-over-year.
The food delivery side follows a straightforward flow. You browse menus and order through the app. The restaurant receives your request, prepares the food, and hands it off. A delivery partner picks it up and brings it to your door. Zomato earns a commission of 18-30% on each order. Delivery partners are independent contractors, not employees. They accept or reject jobs based on their availability. You pay either during ordering or at delivery, then leave reviews that help improve the service.
Blinkit is where the real growth happens now. It accounts for 77.5% of total revenue. The quick commerce model uses a network of dark stores to deliver everyday essentials within minutes. As of Q1 FY27, Blinkit operates 2,443 dark stores and serves 27.2 million monthly transacting customers. Its EBITDA swung from negative ₹162 crore to positive ₹102 crore year-over-year. Hyperpure, meanwhile, supplies ingredients directly to restaurants, turning B2B into a profit center. District handles event ticketing and table reservations, rounding out the four-pillar approach.
Zomato Gold replaced the earlier Zomato Pro subscription. As a Gold member, you get free deliveries on eligible orders, reduced service fees, and additional discounts at partner restaurants. The subscription also includes priority order preparation and delivery, ensuring faster service during peak times. All benefits are automatically applied at checkout. It’s a key retention tool that keeps you locked into the ecosystem across both food delivery and quick commerce.
Zomato’s Key Activities
Zomato’s key activities span seven core areas. Each one drives a specific part of the zomato business model: from food delivery and quick commerce to subscriptions and restaurant partnerships. Here’s what keeps the engine running.
Food Delivery
Food delivery is Zomato’s original business. You use the platform to connect with restaurants, place orders, and get food delivered through independent delivery partners. Restaurants list their menus, you browse and order, and delivery partners handle the pick-up and drop-off.
Zomato charges each restaurant a commission of 18-30% on every order. Delivery partners earn per delivery, with earnings depending on distance and demand. In Q4 FY26, food delivery processed ₹9,757 crore in net order value, up 18.8% year-over-year. Revenue hit ₹3,125 crore, a 29.7% jump from the year before. The segment also posted a record EBITDA margin of 5.5%, showing that this older vertical still has room to grow profitably.
Quick Commerce (Blinkit)
Food delivery brought in ₹3,125 crore last quarter. Blinkit dwarfs that. You’re looking at a different model entirely. It runs on dark stores stocking everyday essentials and delivering within minutes. Unlike food delivery, Blinkit buys products from brands, stocks them in micro-warehouses, and fulfills orders directly.
In Q1 FY27, net order value hit ₹17,132 crore, up 86% year-over-year. Revenue stood at ₹15,664 crore, or 77.5% of the total. Gross margin improved from 23.6% to 27.5% of NOV. EBITDA swung from a loss of ₹162 crore to a profit of ₹102 crore. The network spans 2,443 dark stores, up 899 over the year, serving 27.2 million monthly customers. You’re also looking at a market that crossed 9.5 million daily orders by August 2026. Monthly GMV hit ₹11,000 crore in January 2026, roughly doubling year-on-year. Blinkit leads with 3.4 to 3.6 million daily orders. Zepto follows at 2.4 to 2.6 million, with Swiggy Instamart further behind.
B2B Restaurant Supply (Hyperpure)
Hyperpure supplies fresh ingredients directly to restaurants. Think vegetables, fruits, meat, seafood, dairy, groceries, and beverages. The vertical works directly with farmers and processors, cutting out middlemen to deliver quality produce at better prices. For you as a restaurant owner, it means one reliable supplier instead of juggling multiple vendors every morning. That lock-in makes Hyperpure arguably Zomato’s strongest moat.
Here’s the nuance though. Hyperpure revenue declined 13% to ₹5,366 crore in FY26. The core restaurant supplies business grew, but non-restaurant business was scaled down as part of the quick commerce model transition. So the topline shrank. Yet Hyperpure turned Adjusted EBITDA-positive for the first time in Q3 FY26. Profitability arrived through a leaner operation, not a bigger one.
Events and Experiences (District)
District handles Zomato’s events and experiences vertical. It grew out of Zomaland, the food festival Zomato launched in 2018. Today, District covers dining out, movies, live events, concerts, and comedy shows. It works as a ticketing and booking platform. It keeps you inside the Zomato ecosystem even when you aren’t ordering food.
Full year FY26 Going Out revenue hit ₹973 crore, up 32% year-on-year. Q4 FY26 revenue was ₹277 crore, with net order value of ₹2,736 crore. Though it’s the smallest of the four business lines, District keeps Zomato relevant beyond mealtimes. When you buy concert tickets or reserve a table through District, Zomato earns a cut of that transaction too.
Zomato Gold Subscription
Zomato Gold replaced Zomato Pro as the platform’s subscription product. You pay a recurring fee and get free delivery on orders above ₹99 from restaurants within 7 km. During Q1 FY27, Zomato lowered this threshold from ₹199 to defend market share against rivals like Toing and Ownly. You also get up to 30% extra discount at over 20,000 partner restaurants across India. The benefits stack on top of existing coupons and offers.
The subscription covers priority order preparation and delivery during peak hours. Surge fees and delivery charges get waived, cutting wait times when demand spikes. It’s a retention play: Gold members order more frequently and stick around longer. The program spans both food delivery and quick commerce, binding you to the wider ecosystem.
Restaurant Partnerships and Discovery
Zomato started as a restaurant discovery platform, and that DNA hasn’t disappeared. Restaurants join the platform for visibility: they appear in search results, category feeds, and personalized recommendations. Zomato charges restaurants for premium placement, promotional banners, and featured spots on the homepage.
Beyond basic listings, restaurants can promote events, special offers, and new menu items directly to Zomato’s user base. The company has data on user preferences across different localities, which helps restaurants target the right audience. This discovery engine feeds both the food delivery and table reservation businesses, making it a foundational activity even as the company has expanded into other areas.
Technology and Logistics Infrastructure
Behind every order, whether it’s a biryani from a local restaurant or groceries from Blinkit, sits a complex tech and logistics stack. Zomato runs AI-driven recommendation systems that personalize what users see on the app. Route optimization algorithms figure out the fastest delivery path. Demand prediction models help Blinkit’s dark stores stock the right products in the right quantities.
The logistics network itself is a massive undertaking. Delivery partners, dark store operations, cold chain management for Hyperpure, and real-time order tracking all require constant engineering work. The company operates across 800+ cities, and the infrastructure needed to support that scale is one of its biggest competitive advantages. It’s not flashy, but it’s what makes everything else possible.
Zomato’s Key Partners
The customer segments of Zomato business model can be categorised as follows:
- Local restaurants: Zomato partners with restaurants and helps them increase their visibility and online presence to draw the target audiences and tap into new potential customer bases.
- Users: Zomato acts like a panacea for users by providing them a platform where they can search, discover and explore different restaurants and eateries and order food or book a table and dine out.
- Delivery personnel: Since Zomato offers doorstep delivery services to its customers, it partners with delivery providers who complete the entire chain by offering their full-time or part-time delivery services.
- Reviewers: Reviewers actively review restaurants, cafes, and other food places and provide relevant information to the users about the cuisine and other aspects of the eatery in a textual or graphical form.
Zomato has also partnered with a lot of other businesses like Uber Taxi, Visa, and Paypal. Its tie up with Uber taxi enabled customers to book a ride to go to the restaurants of their choice. It eliminates the need to access two different apps and brings together a combined solution by enabling customers to book a cab and explore nearby restaurants, all at one place. The different alliances provide assistance in finding set-up locations, hiring and other procedures, market research, accounting, handling political and legal issues and so on.
Zomato’s Key Resources
Zomato has a top-notch repository of databases, meticulous and dedicated employees, a talented set of reviewers and content creators, and a large number of funding partners and financial investors like Sequoia Capital, Ant Financial, Info Edge and so on, as key resources to its efficient working.
Zomato’s Key Channels
Zomato website and app are the key channels that help it deliver its services to its customers. The Zomato mobile app is available on both android and iOS devices and customers can alternatively browse the website to explore restaurants and check their ratings on the platform. These key channels help Zomato to engage with, and build its customer base, drive sales and enhance the user experience of the platform. Zomato has also created a site specifically for posting exclusive photos of exotic foods from around the world.
What Value Does Zomato Provide To Its Customers?
At its core, the zomato business model runs on what you might call the QAA model: Quality, Accessibility, Affordability, and Assortment. Each pillar targets a specific customer pain point. Together, they explain why 30 million monthly active users keep coming back to the platform.
On quality, Zomato leans on Hyperpure to maintain ingredient standards across its restaurant network. Hyperpure supplies fresh produce directly to restaurants, cutting out middlemen and keeping costs down. The vertical turned Adjusted EBITDA-positive for the first time in Q3 FY26, which matters because it means the supply chain now pays for itself while still pushing quality upward. Restaurant partners also earn hygiene ratings on the platform: a visible badge that builds customer trust. When it comes to accessibility, the app works across Android and iOS devices with a clean interface that makes browsing and ordering straightforward. Zomato operates in over 800 cities across India, steadily broadening its footprint without chasing international expansion.
Affordability comes through Zomato Gold, the subscription model that replaced the earlier Zomato Pro program. Gold members get free deliveries, reduced service fees, and extra discounts at partner restaurants. The subscription also unlocks priority preparation and faster delivery during peak hours. It’s a retention tool that pays off for frequent users. On the assortment front, the platform aggregates menus from thousands of restaurants across different cuisines, price ranges, and locations. Customers can filter by ratings, delivery time, or dietary preference before making a choice. Combined with a 24/7 customer support chat and mandatory review system, the platform ensures people have enough information to order with confidence.
How Does Zomato Make Money?
You look at Zomato’s actual numbers and see something unexpected. In FY26, the company hit ₹54,364 crore in revenue, growing 169% year-over-year. Food delivery accounts for just about 16% of that total. The rest comes from quick commerce, B2B supply, and events. The zomato business model makes money through six main streams, and each one works differently. Here’s how they break down.
Food Delivery Commissions
Every time you order food through Zomato, the restaurant pays a commission. That rate sits between 18% and 30% of the order value. The exact percentage depends on location, order volume, and the restaurant’s agreement with Zomato. It’s the oldest revenue model in the playbook, and still a steady earner.
In Q4 FY26, food delivery revenue touched ₹3,125 crore, growing 29.7% year-on-year. That’s not the big headline number, but it matters. The vertical also hit a record EBITDA margin of 5.5%, proving the commission model can be profitable at scale.
Delivery and Service Fees
Zomato also charges customers directly. Delivery fees get added to orders, along with small platform and handling charges. These fees vary based on distance, demand, and time of day. During peak hours, surge pricing may kick in for non-Gold members.
Think of the zomato pricing model this way: the restaurant pays a commission, and the customer pays for the convenience of getting food brought to their door. Both sides fund the delivery network. For Zomato, this creates two revenue taps running on the same order.
In-App Advertising
Restaurants compete for attention on the app. Zomato sells them that attention. Sponsored listings, banner ads, featured placements, and promoted search results all cost money. Restaurants pay Zomato to appear higher in search results and category feeds.
With over 30 million monthly active users browsing the app, the advertising real estate is valuable. Restaurants can target specific localities and user preferences based on Zomato’s data. It’s a high-margin revenue stream: once the platform is built, each additional ad costs almost nothing to serve.
Zomato Gold Subscriptions
Zomato Gold replaced the older Zomato Pro program. You pay a recurring subscription fee in return for benefits that stack across the platform. Free delivery on orders above ₹99 from restaurants within 7 km. Up to 30% extra discount at over 20,000 partner restaurants. Priority order preparation during rush hours.
The subscription covers both food delivery and Blinkit. This cross-platform access gives you more reasons to stay within Zomato’s ecosystem. It also creates a lock-in effect. Gold members like you order more frequently because you feel you’re getting value. That recurring revenue shows up as predictable monthly income for Zomato, regardless of how many individual orders it processes.
Quick Commerce (Blinkit)
This is where the real money flows now. When you order from Blinkit, your groceries arrive through a network of dark stores in under 10 minutes. The platform runs on an inventory-led model: Zomato buys products from brands, stocks them, and sells directly to you. The revenue comes from product margins, delivery fees, and in-app advertising.
In Q1 FY27, Blinkit posted ₹15,664 crore in revenue, making up 77.5% of Zomato’s total revenue of ₹20,211 crore. That’s a 37% jump from the previous quarter, with net order value surging 86% year-over-year. The quick commerce market in India hit ₹11,000 crore GMV in January 2026 alone, doubling from the year before. Analysts project 40-45% CAGR growth, with quick commerce expected to capture roughly 10% of branded retail by 2030.
B2B Restaurant Supply (Hyperpure)
Hyperpure supplies fresh ingredients directly to restaurants: vegetables, fruits, meat, dairy, and groceries. It cuts out middlemen by sourcing from farmers and processors, then delivers to restaurant kitchens on a regular schedule. You see revenue from product margins on these bulk supply orders.
In Q3 FY26, Hyperpure turned Adjusted EBITDA-positive for the first time. That’s a milestone after years of losses while building supply chains and scaling operations. But total Hyperpure revenue declined 13% to ₹5,366 crore in FY26. Core restaurant supplies grew, while non-restaurant operations were scaled down. What you get is a leaner, profitable vertical that locks restaurant partners deeper into the Zomato ecosystem.
Together, these six revenue streams show you how Zomato pulled in ₹54,364 crore in FY26. The food delivery commissions that started it all now represent just a slice. Blinkit dominates. Hyperpure is finding its footing. And Gold subscriptions keep the flywheel spinning.
Costs Incurred
Running a multi-vertical zomato business model like Eternal Limited isn’t cheap. Each business line carries its own cost structure, and you have to fund all four simultaneously. Here’s where the money goes.
- Platform development: You invest heavily in technology across all verticals. AI-driven recommendation systems, route optimization algorithms, and demand prediction models for Blinkit’s dark stores require constant work. Real-time order tracking across all verticals adds to the engineering load. The tech stack supports food delivery, quick commerce, B2B supply, and events under one roof.
- Branding and advertising: Marketing campaigns drive consumer awareness and pull users back to the app. You run promotions, discount campaigns, and sponsorships to stay top of mind. This spending scales with growth: more cities, more users, more marketing dollars out the door.
- Dark store infrastructure: Blinkit’s quick commerce model depends on a network of micro-warehouses spread across cities. Each dark store needs lease payments, staff, shelving, lighting, refrigeration, and inventory management systems. The network reached 2,443 dark stores by Q1 FY27. The real estate costs add up fast.
- Inventory and supply chain: Both Blinkit and Hyperpure run inventory-led models. Blinkit buys groceries and essentials from brands to sell directly to consumers. Hyperpure sources fresh produce from farmers and processors to supply restaurants. The range includes vegetables, fruits, meat, and dairy. Cold storage, warehousing, transportation, and procurement form a significant chunk of operating costs.
- Delivery partner payments: Every food delivery order and Blinkit fulfillment involves paying independent delivery contractors. These partners earn per delivery, with earnings based on distance, demand, and order size. With millions of orders processed daily, delivery payouts represent one of the largest ongoing expenses.
- Office maintenance costs: You operate across 800+ cities in India. Regional offices, hub locations, and dark store sites all require maintenance, utilities, and infrastructure spending. The geographic spread means distributed overhead rather than centralized costs.
- Employee salaries: Your workforce grew to 21,995 employees in FY26. The growth came mainly from Blinkit and the going-out business. Salaries span different pay scales: from tech engineers and data scientists to operations staff and regional managers.
- Legal and accounting fees: You pay for regulatory compliance, tax filings, licensing across verticals, and costs tied to mergers and acquisitions. Legal obligations multiply when you’re running four distinct businesses under one parent company.
Bottom-Line?
Zomato began as a restaurant discovery tool. Today, you’d barely recognize it. Under Eternal Limited, the zomato business model has transformed into a multi-vertical operation, with quick commerce now driving the bulk of its revenue. The ₹54,364 crore posted in FY26 tells the story. Food delivery, which once defined the brand, now contributes a shrinking share of total income. Blinkit alone pulls in 77.5%.
Four verticals, food delivery, quick commerce, B2B supply, and events, give Eternal a competitive edge that’s hard to replicate. Each one reinforces the others. Hyperpure locks restaurants into the ecosystem. Zomato Gold binds you across platforms. Hyperpure has turned profitable. Food delivery holds a steady 5.5% EBITDA margin. The company is no longer betting on a single revenue stream.
India’s quick commerce market hit ₹11,000 crore in GMV in January 2026, with a 40-45% CAGR projected through 2030. You’re looking at a company that covers 800+ cities and served 109 million Indians in FY26, transacting over $10 billion. What started as a restaurant listing tool has become something far bigger. And the trajectory suggests it’s far from done.
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