BENGALURU: Food delivery platform Zomato on Monday reported Rs 175 crore net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31. In the year-ago period it had posted a loss of Rs 188 crore.
The platform’s revenue from operations in the March quarter stood at Rs 3,562 crore, a 73% jump compared to Rs 2,056 crore in the same quarter last year. Zomato also said that its quick commerce arm Blinkit business turned adjusted EBITDA positive in March 2024.
In his letter to shareholders, founder Deepinder Goyal said, “We are just grateful that the bet that we took on Blinkit worked out just fine.”
Zomato also proposed to create an additional ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) pool of 2% of its outstanding share capital on a fully diluted basis. It allotted ESOP worth Rs 18.26 crore shares to its employees, according to regulatory filings.
Zomato’s subsidiary Zomato Payment Private Limited (ZPPL) in a separate filing said it will voluntarily surrender the certificate of authorisation issued by RBI to operate as an online payment aggregator. Also, it is withdrawing the application dated November 11, 2021 submitted with the RBI to operate as the issuer of pre-paid payment instruments.
“At Zomato, we do not see ourselves having a significant competitive advantage against the incumbents in the payments space and hence we don’t foresee a business in payments space as commercially viable for us, at this stage,” it said. In Q4, it also recognised an impairment loss of Rs 39 crore in its subsidiary ZPPL.
Zomato also said that rapid store expansion is underway in the quick commerce business as it is aiming for 1,000 stores by March 2025.
“One of the key vectors for growth for us right now is store expansion. In Q4FY24, we added 75 net new stores taking our total store count to 526. In the current quarter (Q1FY25), we expect to add another 100 stores. At this point, we are aiming to get to 1,000 stores by the end of FY25,” Albinder Dhindsa, Founder & CEO, Blinkit.