Instamart Accounts for 90% of Swiggy Losses

Instamart is the real swing factor in Swiggy’s profit story. When one business creates about 90% of group EBITDA losses in Q1 FY25, it means the mature parts of the company, especially food delivery, are getting closer to self funding while quick commerce is still in heavy buildout mode. That buildout is expensive because Swiggy has to open and stock dark stores, pay pickers and riders, and spend aggressively to pull orders away from Blinkit and Zepto.

• Food delivery and quick commerce look similar in the app, but the cost stack is very different. Food delivery mainly coordinates restaurants and riders. Quick commerce also carries inventory and runs local mini warehouses, so every extra neighborhood needs more fixed cost before order density catches up.
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• The comparison that matters is Blinkit. Swiggy’s research notes Blinkit at roughly 40% quick commerce share versus Instamart at 32%, with higher order values. That gap forces Swiggy to keep investing in assortment, discounts, and dark store expansion, which pushes losses into Instamart rather than the core food business.
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• Later results show the same pattern intensifying before improving. By Q4 FY25, Swiggy said group adjusted EBITDA loss was INR 732 crore, while Instamart alone lost INR 840 crore, meaning food delivery and out of home were offsetting part of the burn. That is what a subsidy engine looks like inside a multi vertical app.
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Going forward, Swiggy’s margin trajectory will be decided less by restaurant delivery and more by whether Instamart can make each dark store productive fast enough. The winning play is not just more orders, but denser orders, bigger baskets, and enough local scale that new store losses stop overwhelming the profits generated elsewhere in the app.