It is 8 PM on a Tuesday. You open an app, tap-tap, add to cart some eggs, curd, and a packet of chips. Ten minutes later, someone rings your doorbell.
You don’t think about what just happened. But three companies do, obsessively, expensively, and at a combined loss of thousands of crores every single quarter. That is the world Zepto is about to invite India’s retail investors into, as it goes for IPO.
First, understand who is already in the room.
Blinkit got there first. It crossed 50% market share in September 2025, and just last month, it did something its rivals haven’t managed to do yet — it made money. Blinkit reported an adjusted EBITDA profit of ₹37 crore in Q4 FY26, swinging from a loss of ₹178 crore in the same quarter a year ago.
Swiggy is still bleeding. Instamart posted an adjusted EBITDA loss of ₹858 crore in Q4 FY26 — even as GOV grew 68.8% year-on-year to ₹7,881 crore. The losses are narrowing — Swiggy’s consolidated net loss fell to ₹800 crore in Q4, down from ₹1,081 crore a year earlier. However, the full-year picture tells a harder story. Annual losses widened to ₹4,154 crore in FY26 as it kept spending to stay in the race.
Numbers ahead of the Zepto IPO
And then there is Zepto. Which has not yet told you its FY26 numbers. Here is what it did tell you, from FY25.
Zepto’s total sales were ₹9,668.8 crore — up 129% in a year. Its net loss was ₹3,367.3 crore — up 177% in the same year. Revenue grew fast. Losses grew faster. Losses now equal 35% of turnover, up from 29% the year before — meaning the more Zepto grew, the more it lost per rupee earned. That is the opposite of the story a company tells when it’s heading toward an IPO.
But here is a thing about the ₹9,668 crore number.
Quick commerce platforms only recognise 15–20% of gross merchandise value as actual operational revenue. On that basis, Zepto’s real earned revenue in FY25 was somewhere between ₹1,495 crore and ₹1,994 crore — against Blinkit’s ₹5,206 crore.
SEBI gave its nod on May 8, 2026 for a Zepto IPO targeting ₹11,000–12,000 crore — roughly $1.2 billion. The updated DRHP is expected in six to eight weeks. The roadshow will follow. And at some point, Aadit Palicha — 24 years old, Stanford dropout, one of India’s youngest billionaires — will sit across from institutional investors and retail investors alike and make his case.
His case, essentially, is this: we have cut monthly cash burn from $30 million to $11 million. We have a clear path to profitability.
That may well be true. Zepto has stated it aims to reach EBITDA and operating cash flow breakeven by the March quarter of FY26, and management says burn has been cut by about half in recent quarters.
So what are you actually buying?
You are not buying a grocery delivery company. You are buying a bet that the third-placed player in a three-horse race — in one of the most capital-intensive consumer businesses ever built in India — can close the gap on two rivals who are already listed, already funded, and already ahead.
Together, Blinkit, Instamart and Zepto burnt nearly ₹9,000 crore in just nine to eleven months. None of them are stopping. The projected market is $57 billion by 2030. At that size, India probably has room for two dominant quick commerce players. Maybe three. But “probably” and “maybe” are words that should give any retail investor pause before they click subscribe on a ₹12,000 crore IPO.
The eggs arrived in ten minutes. That part works. What doesn’t work yet — for two of the three companies racing to deliver them — is the business behind the doorbell.
