From Food Delivery to Quick-Commerce Giant – Zomato’s Art of Harnessing Network Effects

No ratings yet. Started as Foodiebay in 2008, as a restaurant discovery platform it provided menus and reviews to its users. Zomato expanded its service in 2015 by including online food ordering. To successfully add more delivery drivers, they benefitted from the cheap data that was available after the internet revolution of India in 2016 (Bajaj Finserve, 2025). This enabled Zomato to create a 3-sided network platform; the restaurant network (money side), the customers base (subsidized side) and the last delivery network (service enabler). Zomato experienced strong cross network effects, with growing number of app users, the number of restaurants on the platform rose which provided more opportunity for gig workers to earn easy buck while delivering food, which improved the service quality by reducing the waiting time for finding a delivery partner, which fed to the loop and increased satisfied app user.
To reach its ambitious growth goals it decided to leverage its restaurant network and launch Hyperpure in 2018. Hyperpure was a B2B sourcing platform for the restaurants. By the end of FY 2025, Hyperpure had 100,000 unique billed outlets on its platform across 8 cities (Eternal, Annual Report 2025). In June 2022, Zomato launched, its Quick-Commerce app, BlinkIt, by acquiring Grofers, and leveraged its massive customer base and last mile delivery network from the restaurant business to become leader in Quick-Commerce industry with a market share of 46% (India Briefing, Dec 2024). BlinkIt’s monthly transacting costumer rose from 2.9 million in FY 2023 to 10.2 million in FY 2025 (Eternal, Investor Presentation July 2025). In FY 2025, Zomato acquired Paytm Insider (Ticketing Platform) and launched its own “Going-Out Business” leveraging both its restaurant network and massive customer base. It has rebranded its “Going-Out Business” as “District” which saw a growth of 4X in annual transactions YoY (Eternal, Investor Presentation July 2025).
Zomato now Eternal, has not only created synergies and economies of data and scope by scaling and protected its networks from its rival but it has also successfully enveloped stand alone networks such as Paytm Insider and Grofers.
References:
Bajaj Finserve, 2025, https://www.bajajfinserv.in/zomato-history#:~:text=Zomato%20was%20founded%20in%202008,market%20needs%20and%20consumer%20behaviour
Eternal, Annual Report 2025, https://b.zmtcdn.com/investor-relations/Eternal_Annual_Report_2024-25.pdf
India Briefing Dec 2024, Quick Commerce Market in India and Key Players, https://www.india-briefing.com/news/quick-commerce-market-in-india-and-key-players-35348.html/).