You have to spend money to make money, goes a popular saying and Swiggy seems to be swearing by it.

Last week, the Bengaluru-based consumer services giant announced its Q3 results, and ever since then, the startup’s share price has nosedived, even reaching a 52-week low. The market seems to have punished the 10-year-old company due to the increase in overall losses, even as revenue growth was muted for Instamart, Swiggy’s growth bet.

The stock has declined over 12% since the foodtech major reported weaker-than-expected earnings in the December quarter of FY25.

In fact, as of Q3 FY25, Swiggy is at the same level as Zomato-owned Blinkit was one year ago. This shows the road ahead for Swiggy’s quick commerce business.

In Q3, the vertical reported 14% QoQ revenue growth to INR 603 Cr, even as Zomato’s quick commerce business touched INR 1,400 Cr in revenue in the same quarter. So a direct comparison with Blinkit is not justified.

Instead, let’s look at whether Swiggy can push Instamart to Blinkit’s current scale in a year’s time or even faster. After all, the company is betting big on expansion and will be investing in its dark store network, adding larger megapods and venturing into new products and categories.

So will Swiggy’s investment into Instamart drive scale? Or is there a deeper problem here, which has put Swiggy in the third place in the quick commerce race, as per some reports, behind Blinkit and Zepto.

The company’s quick commerce business vertical alone posted a staggering loss of INR 527 Cr, a 70% YoY jump. Essentially, Instamart alone contributed to more than 65% of Swiggy’s losses in Q3.

In the post-earnings call, Swiggy attributed the higher losses to spiralling customer acquisition costs and investments towards expansion of the dark store network. But the fact is that Swiggy is not the only one doing so.

Zepto, which raised more than $1.4 Bn last........

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