If you are making 15% gross margin (even this is a a lot since lot of products have margin less than 10%) on the cart value, the unit economies will fit at at least a cart value > 350 (assuming delivery costs are around ~30-50 INR per order). A part of this can be recovered via let’s say advertising revenue. Even then your cart value should be >250 (at least to be contribution margin positive).
They start their free deliveries at 99 (for user acquisition) and retention, then at 199.
So eventually they are assuming that
- The user would be retained & at some point the LTV would cover the acquisition costs
- The cart value would eventually grow from ~100 to ~300
Blinkit has gone public hence they can’t burn money, Zepto is still private so they can. Swiggy aims to go public hence it too is not going that path. Ultimately this would stop even for Zepto in case they wish to survive. So make hay while the sun shines.