Thanks, Manish! And you're right, Manish. Public-market investors globally have a lot of patience with such loss-making businesses. But maybe not the ones in India.

Seetharaman G

Fair point, Ratheejit. We did think of it, but given the lack of recent financial and operational metrics for Swiggy, we thought it would be best to keep the benchmarking section focused on Zomato, which is anyway the focus of the story. And I do think high-growth companies will appeal to Indian investors, but not at the cost of profitability.

Seetharaman G

The Motilal Oswal report, which is where the figure is from, does not explain the basis for that figure. Zomato is just a tiny part of that report, which is on Info Edge.

Seetharaman G

Hey, Peeyush, I get your point that most of what's driving the interest in food delivery is to do with pandemic. And we have made clear the limitations of comparing old data. But the thing is, while stacking up Zomato against global entities, it's important to look at reported, audited numbers.

Seetharaman G

Hey, Amandeep, we have mentioned how much Hyperpure (less than 4%) and advertising and Pro, put together, contribute (14%). The rest–roughly 82%–is from delivery. Zomato doesn't report numbers separately for Pro, so it's hard for us to say. But Zomato has scaled back its global ambitions for Pro by shutting it down in several countries.

Seetharaman G

Hey, Aditya, we understand the limitations of comparing companies across geographies. That's true of any sector. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't. Especially when you don't have any listed players to benchmark the company against in the domestic market. And as for the IPO itself, the pandemic changed the status quo drastically for foodtech companies. So from Zomato's POV, it's partly about trying to cash in on the boom before the tide turns and partly about capitalising on its improving unit economics.

Seetharaman G

Thanks, Jitin. You should be looking at the companies' revenue and not their valuation while considering where they stand relative to the size of the total market.

Seetharaman G

Hey, Anandh, this is from its FY20 annual report. We did a story on it last year: https://the-ken.com/story/scoring-zomatos-report-card/

Seetharaman G

Thanks, Srikanth. 1. No, we have taken Alibaba's entire revenue. Cloud computing is less than a tenth of Alibaba's e-commerce business by revenue. If we excluded that, we would only have EBITDA and not PAT. And anyway, Flipkart itself is not just e-commerce, it has PhonePe. 2. I guess it's a matter of semantics. These companies may be registered elsewhere or have foreign investors, but they were founded here and still have the majority of their operations here. 3. PolicyBazaar has said it will consider dual listing if India allows it. And there are reports that Zomato is also considering India. It's not easy for companies registered in India to list abroad.

Seetharaman G

Thanks, Aishwarya. The rising popularity of OnePlus has certainly helped Amazon. OnePlus had a 50% market share in the online premium smartphone category in April-June 2020, compared to Apple's 25%. And yes, it would be interesting to see if Amazon has changed tack in fashion.

Seetharaman G

Thanks, Parveen. What is interesting is that public-market investors seem to be similar to VCs in that they both put revenue growth first in e-commerce. This is particularly true of emerging markets in India where e-commerce still has a long way to go in terms of penetration.

Seetharaman G

Hey, Mayank, the idea here was not to crystal gaze, which wouldn't be prudent with so many moving pieces. And as for your observation on Tata, I honestly don't think it can be spoken of in the same breath as the other three. Tata has struggled to scale its retail business for years, and even if the acquisition of BigBasket goes through, it's still only grocery.

Seetharaman G