In its investor presentation for the December quarter 2025 (Q3 FY26), the oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) revealed that the ecommerce arm, JioMart, was doing close to 1.6 Mn orders per day.

The company claims to be on track to become India’s second-largest quick commerce player by volume, behind Blinkit at 2 Mn orders per day, but ahead of Swiggy Instamart and Zepto, which are at around 1.2 Mn orders per day.

While the statement quickly caught the attention of India’s quick commerce industry, it was JioMart’s claim of being contribution-margin positive that piqued the interest of industry watchers and rivals. Simply put: Bucking the norm, JioMart is not losing money per order on the platform.

This is a huge accomplishment compared to rivals Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart, who have been loss-making for the past several years and burning cash to acquire customers in top markets.

Blinkit turned adjusted EBITDA positive only in Q3 FY26, posting INR 4 Cr in adjusted EBITDA, whereas Swiggy Instamart reported a contribution margin of -2.6% in Q2 FY26. Zepto’s FY25 financials are not public yet. For FY24, Zepto’s net loss declined 2% to INR 1,248.64 Cr from INR 1,271.84 Cr in FY23.

Satish Meena of Datum Intelligence, who has tracked the ecommerce sector for nearly two decades, said that if JioMart alone has done a daily transaction of 1.6 Mn, beating the likes of Instamart and Zepto, in less than two years, then this is an unprecedented moment in the quick commerce industry from a competition point of view.

As per Reliance, the growth reflects its strategy to tightly integrate quick commerce with its broader retail ecosystem, enabling coverage in over 1,000 cities and 5,000 pincodes, supported by 3,000 overall stores.

In earlier announcements, Reliance said it is running its quick commerce model by repurposing its retail stores as dark stores. This has improved operational efficiency, helping the retail giant reduce the average distance covered per order in the cash-guzzling quick commerce sector.

It added 300 dark stores in the December quarter, taking the total number of dark stores to 800. Blinkit’s dark store count, as per its Q2 FY26 financial report, stood at 1,816, whereas Instamart operated 1,102 dark stores as of Q2 FY26. Zepto had over 1,000 at the end of 2025.

Reliance closing the gap on dark store count and per-order profitability makes us ponder if the dominance of the trio of quick commerce giants, Blinkit, Instamart and Zepto, is at stake.

Late To The Quick Commerce Fray

Reliance Retail has built its business on conventional store formats — supermarkets, hypermarkets, and speciality stores — nearly 20,000 in number, complemented by the digital marketplace JioMart,........

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