India's Zomato posts first-ever profit earlier than expected

India’s Zomato posted its first-ever profit on Thursday, one quarter earlier than expected, helped by a tax gain and strong orders in its food and grocery delivery businesses.

India's Zomato posted its first-ever profit on Thursday, one quarter earlier than expected, helped by a tax gain and strong orders in its food and grocery delivery businesses.

Shares of Zomato went up as much as 3.9% after the results.

Zomato expected to hit this milestone in the September quarter, said Chief Financial Officer Akshant Goyal, adding that they were being conservative with that guidance.

Zomato expects its business to remain profitable going forward while delivering a 40% year-on-year topline growth for at least the next couple of years, he said.

Gross order value (GOV) — the total value of all orders, a percentage of which Zomato gets as revenue — rose 13.9% in its food delivery business.

GOV for its quick-delivery business Blinkit surged 82.6% in the quarter year-on-year, growing 4.6% sequentially. It faced a temporary business disruption in April resulting from a change in the payout structure for delivery partners.

We faced a challenging period of around 45 days, when the number of overall gig workers available to work in our system was 15-20% lower than normal, said Albinder Dhindsa, Blinkit's CEO.