*I was playing with the numbers that Zomato has reported for Blinkit in Q3FY25 results 🙏🙏* Hands down on the amazing execution, but the company is now up for a major challenge. Here is what the data says! .. *See, the company has 1,007 dark stores.* Of these, versus the bottom 25% of the stores, top 5% stores do 12x more GOV. A whopping 12 times more! 🙏🙏 -> Next 10% do 9x more -> Next 15% do 7.5x more -> Next 45% do 5.5x more .. *Why is there such a big divergence?* Because, of the bottom 25% of the stores, 86% are less than 3 months old. That’s because even as Blinkit planned to surpass 1k dark stores mark by end of March, it went past that in Dec itself. This was done to power up growth, which has been slowing down under competition from all fronts. But, opening the stores is the easy part. Now, the question is, how many of these will be able to show growth and demand? .. *I say so because a good lot of these stores have been opened in newer markets* - Almost entirely Tier-2 of the Tier-2 cities, where demand for Quick commerce is yet to be validated. And even if there are pockets of demand in such cities, how big a business could be built here? 🙏🙏 *And for the new stores that have come up in existing markets, there the competitors have doubled down too.* Plus, the competition is not at all shy of pouring more money and expanding their presence. Also, given much of the competition is unlisted and ready to burn significant sums (Zepto, Flipkart Minutes & BigBasket) this will be a big challenge. Because, Zomato’s Blinkit, as well as Swiggy are now listed and have the investor pressure to ensure improving unit economics. What do you think? .. *Support my work:* https://t.ly/SUPPORTjay *Check my work with:* - 3k+ on Decoding The Dragon (https://t.ly/chnwj) - 2.7k+ on Deepdives with Jay (https://t.ly/dwj) - 2.1k+ on BharatNama (https://t.ly/bwj) Best, Jayant Shilanjan Mundhra