Quick Commerce Losses to Rise Higher in Q4, Food Delivery May Slow Down: Report

The quick commerce companies like Zomato’s Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, and BigBasket are likely to witness higher losses in the January-March quarter as compared to the previous one, said BofA Securities in its latest report. The analyst attributed the rising losses to increasing competition, higher discounts, expansion expenses, and more.

“Most investors expect Q4 quick commerce losses to be higher than Q3”. The analyst expects competition to remain high for next 12-15 months as new platforms launch their services and as incumbent platforms enter in each other’s turf, they are likely to offer higher discounts initially.

“Incumbents are unlikely to let go off their highend users and are likely to respond with focus on first-mover advantage, and high competition is likely to lead to higher marketing spending,” BofA stated.

In the last few months, the 10-minute delivery game has seen the entry of new players like Flipkart Minutes, Amazon Tez, BigBasket, Reliance, Swish, and others. The trend has push the market giants like Zepto, Blinkit and Instamart to invest heavily on dark stores, marketing expenses, heavy discounts, free cash, and more.

However, going into FY26, BofA predicted that losses should narrow materially as competition is expected to ease.

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Food Delivery Slowdown

The food delivery GOV growth in next few quarters is expected to slow to 16-18% year-on-year basis, it said. The market expectation of food delivery business was 20%. As growth slows, the analyst doesn’t expect companies to meaningfully increase platform fees.

“As Zomato or Swiggy invest in their respective 10-minute in-house café offerings, we see marginally higher investments. We note food delivery has been cash-cow, which has partly funded loss-making quick commerce business,” it added.

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While these platforms have already started to expand to tier 2 and 3 cities to improve their reach, the analyst still remain unsure of the demand from these cities given lower spending power and more-price sensitive users.

The report revealed that it has also seen food delivery companies shut down in smaller cities and e-commerce platforms struggling to gain meaningful traction in these cities.