The company says that it was able to achieve the milestone by weaning away unprofitable users and orders which were contributing negatively to the financial performance
Instamart, the quick commerce arm of Swiggy, hit contribution margin (CM) break-even in May 2026, with an overall contribution for the first quarter at -0.2 per cent of gross order value (GOV). The GOV grew 39.8 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 7,907 crore in Q1FY27.
Swiggy Co-founder Sriharsha Majety said that the company prioritised improving unit economics over fleeting headline growth. The efforts over the last few quarters were to reset its user base, economics and experience, he noted. Our CM losses had peaked at −5.6 per cent of GOV in Q4FY25.
The chosen path of getting to contribution neutrality was to make the business stronger, the company said. It added that Instamart was able to achieve that by weaning away unprofitable users (around four million over the last three quarters) and orders which were contributing negatively to the financial performance.
“We improved our contribution by Rs 28 per order over the last five quarters. Our adjusted revenue, in particular, moved from Rs 83 in Q4FY25 to Rs 108 in Q1FY27. This helped in the sequential Ebitda loss reduction of Rs 80 crore in Q1FY27,” management said in the shareholders’ letter for Q1FY27.
Road To Ebitda Break-even
The company said that it expects to hit overall adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) break-even at a scale of around Rs 60,000 crore of run-rate annualised net order value (NOV) with 5 to 6 per cent CM equating to Rs 30 per order.
This means the company expects Instamart to break-even on an adjusted Ebitda basis when the platform reaches 25 to 30 crore quarterly orders, up from 11.5 crore currently. Over the last five quarters, the company added Rs 28 per order and it needs to add another Rs 30 per order to break-even at the above volume run-rate, it noted.
The company added that an inventory-led operating model will unlock an additional Rs 4 to 5 per order, which can potentially help fast-track this journey and achieve break-even at a lower scale. It reiterated its medium-term ambition of scaling to over Rs 1 lakh crore NOV at a 4 to 5 per cent adjusted Ebitda margin.
Instamart’s Next Growth Phase
As the base expectations in quick commerce become more commoditised, the Co-founder of Swiggy said that the company strongly believes its differentiated assortment strategy will be the engine for its next growth phase. In line with its strategy, it has partnered with over 400 brands to curate higher-quality, value-forward alternatives across core daily-use categories at compelling price points.
“We have successfully completed the first phase of this initiative by launching such Switch to Better selection across 50 key product categories, which now contribute to more than 15 per cent of the category sales in a very short time,” he pointed out.
Increasing per-order monetisation saw Adjusted Revenue per order (RPO) rise to Rs 108 (sequential improvement of Rs 11) in the last quarter. The company expanded its network to 1,171 dark stores across 131 cities and plans to further densify this footprint.
