Zomato – Should you order?

I don’t know why you all keep focusing on blinkit, by zomato I mean only zomato.

Just look at amazon and flipkart, it has been a decade and a half and both companies are loss making. Even the Amazon from usa has thin profit margin in its core business and relies on AWS for major profits. Despite the fact that amazon is also selling its prime subscription and flipkart charging different types of fee such as cardboard fee, safety fee, some-new-name fee, etc etc apart from delivery and commission.

Ecommerce has a lot of downsides also especially in countries like India. Like in fashion segment women have high return rate. My own girlfriend’s purchasing behavior has convinced me that as long as customers like her exist fashion ecommerce is doomed. As she buys new dress every week and return them after 2-3 days of wearing. She has new dress every week. And I have noticed she is not some outlier, a lot of women do this.

I don’t think quick commerce will succeed in price sensitive market of india unless they start charging more than even kirana stores and rich people start paying for convenience (that too is doubtful as servants are affordable in india to bring ration from stores).

Or maybe one other way they can be profitable is increasing the order value. Such as minimum order value should be 10-15k. Even legends like dmart don’t want to sell milk or vegetables, bigbazar suffered a lot from such strategies, even today reliance smart sells spoiled and not-so-fresh vegetables that most likely ends up in trash (they literally think people will buy 2 days old dhania whose leaves look depressed for half the price?).

Maybe you guys are over optimistic on quick commerce.