Blinkit

Blink Commerce Private Limited, d/b/a Blinkit and formerly Grofers, is an Indian quick-commerce service. It was founded in December 2013 and is based out of Gurgaon.

Customers of the company use a mobile application to order groceries and essentials online. Blinkit's employees then secure the items from their warehouse and deliver the items to the consumer within 10 minutes. By November 2021, the company was delivering 1.25 lakh orders every day. Blinkit currently operates in more than 30 cities in India. As of 2021, the company has raised about US$630 million from investors including SoftBank, Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital.

In 2022, Zomato acquired Blinkit for US$568 million in an all-stock deal.

History
Blinkit was founded in December 2013 by Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar as Grofers. Having met each other while working for Cambridge Systematics during the late 2000s, they teamed up to enter the grocery delivery space. Their goal was to solve the problems (both on customer as well as merchant end) associated with the unorganized nature of the sector. The startup piloted in Delhi NCR before reaching other cities in India.

After seven years of operations as an online grocery delivery service, Blinkit introduced express grocery delivery in India, by building dark stores across cities. In July 2021, the company reported delivering over 7000 groceries in 15 minutes in Gurgaon. A month later, in August 2021, it introduced 10-minute delivery in the top-12 cities, after completing over 20,000 under-15-minute deliveries per day across 10 cities. On 13 December 2021, Grofers changed its brand name to Blinkit in line with its vision to embrace quick-commerce.

In March 2022, Blinkit fired 1,600 employees and ground staff, nearly 5% of its total workforce, in an effort to cut burn rate. Following this, Zomato granted a US$150 million loan to Blinkit. Zomato had acquired a 10% stake in company the year prior. Following numerous discussions, on 24 June 2022, Zomato announced that it would acquire Blinkit for US$568 million in an all-stock deal. The acquisition was completed on 10 August 2022.

Services
Blinkit primarily delivers groceries, fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, stationery, bakery items, personal care, baby care and pet care products, snacks, flowers, etc.

Criticism
In August 2021, the company's 10-minute delivery service faced criticism with concerns raised over the safety of delivery partners. CEO Albinder Dhindsa, in a tweet, defended the mechanism behind express delivery and claimed that there had been zero accidents.

In April 2023, hundreds of Blinkit delivery partners in Delhi NCR, where about half of the company's dark stores were located, went on a strike after a revision in payout structure resulted in lower earnings for them. This led to a temporary closure of many dark stores.

Funding rounds
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