Zomato-owned Blinkit's marketplace arm Blink Commerce Pvt. Ltd reported its FY22 loss at Rs 1,019 crore against Rs 381.7 crore in FY21, mainly driven by higher spending on transportation, contract and advertising.
Until a few months ago, quick commerce company Blinkit (erstwhile Grofers), operated two companies – Blink Commerce, its marketplace vertical and Hands on Trade Pvt. Ltd, its business-to-business (B2B) vertical. Both these entities now belong to Zomato after its acquisition of Blinkit, as the food delivery aggregator has stepped on the gas pedal to ramp-up its quick commerce offerings.
Blink Commerce’s revenue from operations grew 18% to Rs 236.3 crore in FY22, according to its latest filings with the Registrar of Companies.
The company did not respond to VCCircle’s queries until the time of publishing.
In FY22, Blink Commerce's expenses more than doubled to Rs 1,262. 3 crore, as the company pivoted to from a next-day delivery to a quick commerce delivery model during the year.
A large part of these expenses was due to contract and transportation costs.
Blink Commerce spent Rs 247 crore in contract costs, particularly site labour supervision, in FY22, about ten-times more than Rs 23.2 crore in FY21.
It spent Rs 171.4 crore in transportation during the year, up 65.7% than last year. The company, which operates dark stores and warehouses for quick delivery, reported rental expenses to Rs 117.7 crore, 1.7x of Rs 44.3 crore in FY21.
In FY22, its employee benefit expenses grew to Rs 274.7 crore, compared to Rs 195.7 crore in FY21.
The company spent Rs 139.8 crore in advertising and promotion expenses during the year, up 47% over the last fiscal.
Zomato has rolled out a Grocery tab on its app in all cities where Blinkit is present, to leverage the relatively larger Zomato customer base, Albinder Dhindsa, co-founder of Blinkit, said in a recent filing.
He further added that the company is also leveraging Zomato’s B2B supplies business Hyperpure’s and its quality temperature-controlled warehousing infrastructure for fruits, vegetables and other perishable items for Blinkit’s requirements.
“We have also started experimenting on the delivery fleet integration with Zomato in select locations, but we expect a full-blown integration to be more relevant in the medium term once Blinkit has the right scale to meaningfully impact last mile delivery cost,” he said.