Zomato, Swiggy and Meituan: What Food Delivery Unit Economics Really Show

On 11 September 2026, Entrackr reported a Bernstein comparison of food delivery unit economics that is easy to quote and hard to read correctly. Zomato and Swiggy, it says, now make close to what Meituan made on each food delivery order at its peak, even though China's food delivery market is roughly 22 times the size of India's.

The underlying point is real, but the headline numbers are not like-for-like. They mix profit measures, periods and unstated exchange rates, and the Meituan benchmark is the quarter Bernstein calls its peak, a level Meituan's local commerce segment has not reached since. This explainer uses the three companies to show how these metrics are measured, what the filings let you check and what the comparison cannot tell you.

What the Bernstein comparison says

Entrackr does not name the report, its analysts or the exchange rates used. Every figure in this section is Bernstein's, as reported by Entrackr: some are its own estimates, and some are company numbers it has converted to dollars.

• Market size: about $230 billion in China (CY25) against over $10 billion in India (FY26), up from $1.2 billion in FY18.
• Profit per order: about $0.3 of operating profit for Meituan in Q2 2024, which Bernstein calls its peak, and about $0.2 of adjusted EBITDA each for Zomato and Swiggy in Q1 FY27 (April to June 2026).
• Average order value (Entrackr's 'GOV per order' for the Indian pair): $7.2 for Meituan at that peak, against $5.2 for Zomato and $5.4 for Swiggy. No period is given for the Indian figures.
• Scale: Meituan food delivery GTV of $164 billion annualised (March 2026 quarter) against Zomato GOV of $6 billion annualised (Q1 FY27), which the report calls 29x; and Meituan food delivery operating profit of $4.9 billion in what Entrackr labels FY24 (Meituan's financial year is the calendar year) against $0.2 billion of adjusted EBITDA for Zomato in FY26.
• Penetration: food delivery at about 15% of food services in India (FY26) and about 27% in China (labelled FY25).

Two ratios do not reproduce exactly. $230 billion ÷ $10 billion is 23x; 22x implies India at about $10.45 billion, which fits 'over $10 billion'. $164 billion ÷ $6 billion is 27.3x, not 29x. Rounding is the likely reason.

Food delivery unit economics: five metrics, defined

• GOV and GTV. Gross order value (Zomato, Swiggy) and gross transaction volume (Meituan) measure what customers pay through the platform. Swiggy defines food delivery GOV on completed orders, gross of discounts, including delivery charges, packaging, user fees and taxes, excluding tips. Meituan's GTV counts paid transactions including delivery charges and VAT. Swiggy defines net order value (NOV) as GOV less all discounts. Eternal, which now leads with NOV, gives no formula, saying only that its food delivery GOV growth ran a few percentage points above NOV growth.
• AOV. Average order value is GOV divided by orders. Swiggy's filed food delivery AOV was ₹428 in FY24, ₹458 in FY25 and ₹484 in FY26.
• Take rate. The share of order value the platform books as revenue, from restaurant commissions, advertising, user fees and delivery charges. Neither company files a single take rate, so it is derived: for Swiggy in FY26, adjusted revenue of ₹8,867 crore divided by GOV of ₹34,593 crore is about 25.6%.
• Contribution margin. What an order leaves after variable costs. Swiggy defines it as adjusted revenue less delivery and other charges, platform-funded discounts and other variable costs, as a percentage of GOV.
• Adjusted EBITDA per order. Profit after the remaining operating costs, before depreciation, divided by orders. At the consolidated level both companies exclude share-based payment expense and deduct Ind AS 116 lease rentals; Swiggy's food delivery figure is segment results less those lease rentals. It is not an Ind AS measure, so definitions vary.

A worked example from Swiggy's filed numbers

Swiggy does not publish quarterly food delivery order counts, but its KPI databook, released with Q1 FY27 results on 30 July 2026, gives full-year figures. Dividing FY26 totals by 714.3 million orders gives this chain (derived):

1. GOV: ₹34,593 crore, or ₹484 per order.
2. Adjusted revenue: ₹8,867 crore, about ₹124 per order (25.6% of GOV).
3. Contribution: ₹2,606 crore, about ₹36 per order (7.5% of GOV).
4. Adjusted EBITDA: ₹1,000.6 crore, about ₹14.0 per order (2.9% of GOV).

At ₹88.35 per dollar, our FY26 average of US Federal Reserve H.10 noon buying rates, that is roughly $0.16 of adjusted EBITDA on a $5.48 order. The shape matters more than the decimals: about a quarter of each order becomes revenue, under a tenth survives variable costs and about 3% survives everything else. On the cost side, Bernstein, as reported by Investing.com on 5 August 2026, put delivery at ₹60-65 per order including last-mile delivery and rider recruitment.

What the filings can and cannot confirm

Eternal's Q1 FY27 shareholders' letter (22 July 2026) reports Zomato food delivery NOV of ₹10,769 crore, with growth of more than 20% year on year, and adjusted EBITDA of ₹606 crore, 5.6% of NOV and up 34%. It says Eternal is sunsetting GOV disclosure from this quarter, noting only that GOV growth was a few percentage points higher than NOV growth, and gives no order count. Bernstein's Zomato GOV per order and $6 billion annualised GOV cannot be matched to a filed number. For scale, annualised NOV is ₹43,076 crore (₹10,769 crore × 4), about $4.55 billion at our April-June 2026 H.10 average of ₹94.63 per dollar. GOV, counted before discounts, would be higher.

One Bernstein figure does check out. Eternal's letters put Zomato's food delivery adjusted EBITDA at ₹451 crore, ₹503 crore, ₹531 crore and ₹532 crore in the four quarters of FY26. That sums to ₹2,017 crore, about $0.23 billion at ₹88.35 per dollar (derived), consistent with Bernstein's rounded $0.2 billion.

Swiggy's Q1 FY27 letter (30 July 2026) reports food delivery GOV of ₹9,490 crore, up 17.4%, and adjusted EBITDA of ₹292 crore, 3.1% of GOV. Without a quarterly order count, its $0.2 per order is also an estimate. The FY26 calculation above gives about $0.16, which matches Bernstein's rounded figure only loosely.

Do not read Zomato's 5.6% against Swiggy's 3.1% directly. Eternal divides by NOV and Swiggy by GOV. Where NOV is smaller than GOV, as it is on Swiggy's definition, the same rupee profit shows up as a higher percentage of NOV, so Zomato's margin on a GOV basis would be lower than 5.6%. As a separate data point, Bernstein analyst Jignanshu Gor, speaking to CNBC-TV18 as reported by Storyboard18 on 31 March 2026, said Zomato's EBITDA per order was ₹20-22 in the previous quarter. At that date the latest quarter Eternal had reported was Q3 FY26 (October to December 2025). It is an analyst's figure, not one this article could match to a filing.

Four caveats on the China comparison

• Different profit measures. Meituan's figure is operating profit, which is after depreciation, and its segment profit excludes unallocated items such as share-based compensation. The Indian figures are adjusted EBITDA, before depreciation. Related measures, not the same one.
• No filed food delivery line. Meituan's Core Local Commerce segment also includes Instashopping and its in-store, hotel and travel businesses, so the $0.3, $7.2, $164 billion and $4.9 billion are Bernstein's own carve-outs. A rough filed proxy: Q2 2024 segment operating profit of RMB15,234 million ÷ 6,167.1 million on-demand delivery transactions (food delivery plus Instashopping) = RMB2.47, about $0.34 at our Q2 2024 H.10 average of RMB7.24 per dollar. It is a sanity check, not a like-for-like figure. Bernstein's $4.9 billion is about 67% of the segment's 2024 operating profit of RMB52,415 million ($7.28 billion at the 2024 H.10 average of RMB7.20).
• A peak, not the present. Bernstein calls Q2 2024 Meituan's peak. In the filings it was the Core Local Commerce segment's high point, RMB15.2 billion at a 25.1% margin; Meituan's group operating profit was actually higher in Q3 2024, at RMB13.7 billion against RMB11.3 billion, but no later quarter up to Q2 2026 has matched the segment figure. Meituan's Q2 2025 announcement blamed 'irrational competition' for a fall to 5.7%; the segment then ran a negative 21.0% margin in Q3 2025 and lost RMB6.9 billion in calendar 2025, against a RMB52.4 billion profit in 2024. In Q2 2026, reported on 28 August 2026, it turned positive at a 7.9% margin, earning RMB5,668 million, about 63% below Q2 2024.
• Currency and periods. Bernstein's exchange rates are not stated, and the comparison mixes Q2 2024 with Q1 FY27, the March 2026 quarter with the June 2026 quarter (the 29x), CY25 with FY26, and calendar 2024 with FY26. At ₹94.63 per dollar, $0.2 is about ₹18.9, and $5.2 would be about ₹492 if it relates to that quarter; a different rate or period changes those equivalents.

Why a smaller market can still earn similar profit per order

Profit per order is decided mainly inside each order: what the customer spends, how much of it the platform keeps and what delivery costs. The size of the national market largely decides how many orders there are, and so the size of the total profit pool, although more orders also spread fixed costs more thinly.

Against order value, the gap narrows further. On Bernstein's rounded figures, Meituan's peak profit was about 4.2% of AOV ($0.3 ÷ $7.2), Zomato's about 3.8% ($0.2 ÷ $5.2) and Swiggy's about 3.7% ($0.2 ÷ $5.4). On these mixed measures the slices look similar, but Meituan's figure is after depreciation and the Indian figures are before it, so treat the similarity as approximate, not a like-for-like match. Bernstein, as reported by Investing.com on 5 August 2026, described Indian food delivery's adjusted EBITDA margins of around 5% as the highest globally. Density matters too. In Eternal's letter, Deepinder Goyal says growth 'drives frequency, which drives density, which drives efficiency'.

China shows the other side. Caixin reported that JD.com entered the delivery market in February 2025 and that Alibaba announced a RMB50 billion subsidy for Taobao instant retail that July; Meituan's Q2 2025 filing cites significantly higher incentives deducted from delivery revenue. The larger market did not protect Meituan's local commerce margins.

What limits it

Bernstein's own caveat matters most. As Entrackr reports it, today's order values come largely from comparatively well-off customers. The users the platforms still have to win are likely to place cheaper orders, and a smaller order leaves less room to cover delivery. The same Bernstein analysis reported by Investing.com put food delivery AOV at around ₹400 against about ₹150 for food services broadly. A ₹60-65 delivery cost is 15-16% of a ₹400 order; on Swiggy's filed FY26 AOV of ₹484, it is 12.4-13.4% (both derived). Bernstein's ₹400 is not defined, so it may not be on the same basis as Swiggy's GOV-based AOV.

Low-price models are testing exactly that. Swiggy's letter describes Toing as its standalone app for affordable meals, expanded to about 50 cities during the quarter, and calls early signs very encouraging, saying two in three new Toing users were new to the platform or had been dormant on Swiggy. Eternal sees it differently: in its letter, Deepinder Goyal says Toing and Ownly have had limited impact on Zomato and that their traction is 'purely price-driven'.

Costs move too. Swiggy's letter calls the 20 basis point sequential margin dip in Q1 FY27 largely seasonal, driven by higher spending on delivery partner availability, which it says normalises through the year, and the annual wage hike. And the absolute pool remains small: Bernstein's $4.9 billion Meituan figure is about 24.5 times its $0.2 billion for Zomato (4.9 ÷ 0.2).

What to watch in the next filings

• Swiggy's food delivery adjusted EBITDA as a share of GOV, against its stated medium-term steady-state guidance of 5%, and Eternal's margin on NOV, against the 5-6% of NOV steady-state range referred to in its Q1 FY27 letter.
• AOV and basket value; Swiggy reported basket value up 4.8% year on year in Q1 FY27.
• Delivery partner costs, including incentives and wage revisions.
• How far Toing, Ownly and other low-price apps grow, and at what order values.
• Meituan's Core Local Commerce margin. On the Q2 2026 call, reported by Investing.com, CFO Shaohui Chen said subsidies across the industry remained well above 2024 levels and would take a few quarters to normalise.

The summary

The Bernstein comparison makes a fair point in shorthand: India's two food delivery platforms now earn a meaningful profit per order despite a far smaller market. It is not a precise measurement. The Meituan side is an estimate for the quarter Bernstein calls its peak, on a different profit measure; Zomato's can no longer be checked against filed GOV; and Swiggy's can only be approximated from annual data. Checking the definition, the denominator and the period is the same habit covered in how to analyse IPO financials and peer comparison in an IPO.

This article is educational and is not investment advice. Figures come from company disclosures and reported analyst estimates as at the dates stated; Bernstein's numbers rest on secondary reporting, so verify them against the companies' latest filings before relying on them.