Meet the Blinkit man who turned Zomato’s ‘mistake’ into a dream run

A tall jolly good fellow zigzagging through Delhi streets on his Bullet and dribbling ball on basketball courts. That is the picture of Albinder Dhindsa that flashes on the minds of people who know him from his IIT Delhi days. Atypical for an IIT lad, Dhindsa comes from a family of landlords from Sangrur in Punjab, a citadel of Jat Sikhs. He swapped the serenity of the vast farmlands in interior Punjab for the vagaries of startup life. The punt didn’t go wrong.Blinkit, the quick-commerce venture run by Dhindsa, turned out to be a surprise package fuelling its parent Zomato’s bull run on the bourses, thereby making it the toast of the town.Having said that, for the most part, it was a precarious journey for Dhindsa.Highs and lowsIn its decade-plus existence, Blinkit (which was earlier Grofers) swung from the heights of venture-capital influx to starvation and uncertainty. During 2014-16, marquee investors such as SoftBank, Tiger Global and Sequoia passed up its larger rival BigBasket and backed Grofers for the asset-light model championed by its young founders, Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar.But the lack of control over inventory proved to be disastrous and sank Grofers along with its peers such as PepperTap and LocalBanya. While other grocery startups went belly-up, Grofers survived, thanks to the huge amounts of cash it raised from its big backers.Having come back from a near-death experience, Grofers pivoted to the inventory-led model. It massively scaled back and confined to delivering just packed items. It did away with fresh vegetables, which were more complex to handle. SoftBank and Tiger Global backed Grofers again.But after some time, investors began to lose hope about the low-margin inventory-heavy grocery commerce model where Grofers competed with four big players — Tata BigBasket, Walmart-Flipkart, Amazon and Reliance Jiomart. That is when Dhindsa’s longtime pal and one-time boss Deepinder Goyal, the Zomato chief, offered a fresh lease of life for Grofers. medium110760691Braving criticism and scepticism, they went about rebranding and executed a complete pivot to instant delivery. But Dhindsa’s troubles did not end there. He had to endure a massive valuation cut again. Zomato came in as a strategic investor in Grofers at a little over $1bn valuation. A year later, when the public-listed food-delivery company fully acquired Grofers (by then rebranded as Blinkit), the latter’s valuation halved.Blinkit’s initial few months in the house of Zomato was a déjà vu of the Grofers days in 2016 when it underwent massive downscaling. It shut several dark stores and streamlined operations. But Dhindsa’s tenacity, his deep understanding of the innards of grocery commerce, excellent comradery between Dhindsa and Goyal that predated their IIT Delhi days, and the agility they displayed in riding the quick-commerce wave paid dividends.The public-market investors are enthusiastic about Blinkit’s nearly $2bn GMV (gross merchandise value) and 5mn-plus transacting users across 26 cities as it delivers coriander leaves, atta, chocolates, room freshener and glue stick in 12.5 minutes on an average.In fact, two years ago, the market didn’t take kindly to the news of Zomato’s Blinkit acquisition. Its stock price nosedived from ₹70 to ₹43 within weeks. It has jumped 5x since then. It is currently trading at around ₹182 and Zomato’s market cap touched $20bn. Zomato’s dream run is mainly attributed to Blinkit, which was once derided as an expensive mistake.Sangrur-Patiala-DelhiThough they belonged to Sangrur, the Dhindsas moved to Patiala as Albinder’s mother made sure that her sons moved out of the village and had access to good schools.About the village setting, Dhindsa told this reporter some years ago: “If your son wasn’t staying at home, asking you for money and not doing drugs, that was a positive.”Apparently, the parents’ emphasis on education shaped the destiny of the Dhindsa brothers who made it to IIT. His elder brother opted for civil service and lived up to their parents’ aspirations. The elder brother’s success with IIT entrance and civil service set the path for Albinder. However, from a familial point of view, he took a detour after gaining a civil engineering degree from IIT Delhi. He moved to Silicon Valley as an analyst and later got an MBA from Columbia University.Then his friend Goyal called him to be a part of Zomato’s early set of leaders. They knew each other as they belonged to the same NTSE (National Talent Search Examination) cohort from Punjab. Their friendship grew in IIT. One of their contemporaries identifies them as part of the Punjab-Chandigarh gang. Others in that close group included Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. medium110761145Among those college friends, Goyal has a special place. It was he who brought Dhindsa into the Indian startup scene on his return from the US. At Zomato, he led international expansion for two-and-a-half years till his exit to start Grofers. Some even attribute Dhindsa’s decision to start up as a “rub-off effect”. Goyal became one of his earliest backers as an angel investor in Grofers. Nine years down the line, Goyal’s Zomato became a strategic investor in Grofers.It worked for both: Grofers, which had been rebranded as Blinkit, got the much-needed capital, and Zomato a shiny new weapon in its armoury to take on rival Swiggy’s Instamart, which already had a headstart in quick commerce. Dhindsa and Goyal’s bond and their symbiotic relationship played a defining role in Blinkit’s rise in the past three years.The Deepi factorIn fact, Grofers’ pivot to instant delivery and rebranding coincided with Zomato’s $100mn strategic investment in the company. Goyal was insistent on the shift to quick commerce, and this ruffled feathers at Grofers, according to sources. Co-founder Kumar, who led operations, quit within a few months.In the meantime, Zomato was witnessing something in its international business. Two years prior to this, the company had sold off its UAE food-delivery business to Delivery Hero in 2019. Even after the sale, Zomato was running the operations for the new entity as per an operational partnership agreement.Zomato also had food-delivery operations in Türkiye following the acquisition of restaurant research firm Mekanist.Goyal, who was directly involved in some of these global businesses, was closely watching how instant grocery delivery firms had started gaining traction in multiple markets. Companies like Getir were gaining popularity among consumers and bagging investor cheques in quick succession.According to data available on Tracxn, the Turkish firm, which had raised $38mn in 2020, raised three consecutive rounds by June 2021 to the tune of $128mn, $300mn and $555mn, respectively. medium110760774This was the same time Zomato was also gearing up for its initial public offering (IPO).Grocery was the next obvious extension for Zomato, but the market was still evolving with companies dilly-dallying between the next-day and same-day delivery, which would be up to 60-90 minutes.As for Grofers, it wasn’t that hyperlocal delivery had not been experimented before. Grofers itself had started and shut the same-day delivery in 2016. So, the initial confidence in this idea was palpably low.“At that time, they [Grofers] were larger than Swiggy’s Instamart in terms of revenue. As compared to Instamart, which had a ticket size of ₹200-300, Grofers’ order size stood at ₹1,500-2,000. The economics of the business was better as the next-day delivery was happening by consolidating orders. Some people thought moving things quickly would make economics difficult,” said a person privy to the discussions.That is when Kumar left the firm. Dhindsa stayed on to chart the new course.Despite being joined at the hips, Goyal and Dhindsa are poles apart when it comes to running a business. While Goyal likes disruption and pushing boundaries, Dhindsa is more of a people’s person who wants to take everyone along.Some say Goyal’s disruptive style impacted the consensus culture at Grofers, resulting in multiple senior-level exits.The 10-minute pivotFor all these years, the focus was on large warehouses. The company had to build new capabilities. For the next couple of quarters, Goyal was deeply involved in every project in Blinkit. Dhindsa led the overall operations in line with the new strategy and managed the team. The focus was to reset.The company worked on an automated replenishment system (ARS Lite) for accurate and faster product replenishments at scale. According to a blog by Abhishek MR, a software development engineer at Blinkit, this system automatically raised internal stock transfer orders between warehouses, helping the company get to the 10-minute delivery time frame.According to a source, this was happening at a time when some of the other rivals were resorting to Excel sheets. medium110760723To begin with, Grofers shifted to 90-minute delivery from the next day.To everyone’s surprise, the difference in traction and consumer reaction was remarkable.“Same-day delivery was getting a lot of traction. The consumer cohorts were very strong. There was an economic challenge but that was there in food business also. When we analysed the data, 30 minutes was so much better than next-day delivery,” said a person privy to the development.In Türkiye, Getir had created 10- as well as 30-minute stores. Ten minutes had lesser number of stock-keeping units (SKUs). “We thought the same model could work for Grofers,” said a person quoted above.However, when Grofers launched 10-minute delivery in select micro markets, it started seeing a lot of traction there as well. “It was decided that Grofers would do the hard pivot and shut down everything but 10 minutes,” the person added.In August 2021 Dhindsa took to Twitter: We are now delivering groceries in 10 minutes in 10 cities. &#55357;&#56960;

Our next goal is to bring the delivery time to below 10 mins for the majority of our customers within the next 45 days.⌛️

If we don't serve your area yet, we will be there very soon. ✅ http://t.co/GiRhP4sIef

— Albinder Dhindsa (@albinder) August 17, 2021 However, this move was met with huge criticism. Social media users criticised the company for putting the riders under time pressure.Dhindsa posted a carefully crafted letter, clarifying that the company’s stores were within 2km of their customers, allowing them to deliver in 10 minutes.But was he this calm even inside the office?“Albi isn’t a person who gets unfazed so easily. The company’s conviction [on 10 minutes] came from consumer insights, data tracking and talking with the team. Even before the 10-minute delivery happened, Grofers had already rallied the whole team. Grofers believed quick commerce was the future. All he would do was work to ensure that everybody stayed focused on the strategy,” said a person who has worked with him closely, adding that good times or bad times, nobody in the office has seen Dhindsa lose his cool ever.“He is very aggressive, but it doesn’t show it in shouting or thumping tables. When required, he can be hard. When doing reviews, he can push people towards difficult goals. He is not a gyaani baba but rather a very deep-thinking guy who focuses a lot on consumer insights,” said another person.But at some point, criticism became personal. Zomato came under fire for not disclosing that Dhindsa and Zomato chief people officer Akriti Chopra were married.“Albi would care about two things — firstly whether we had done everything right or taken shortcuts. In this case, the company had taken opinion from many people. It wasn’t in violation of any law. The second thing was whether Akriti was getting affected. However, she too is a seasoned professional,” said a person who has closely worked with him.A chartered accountant by training, Chopra is a long-timer at Zomato. She spent most of her time in finance, went on to become the chief financial officer (CFO) and later was elevated to the status of a co-founder. Dhindsa and Chopra likely met at Zomato a decade ago.“All in all, that controversy [around lack of relationship disclosure] didn’t impact him much,” said the person quoted above. “He rarely gets perturbed and even if he does, he would not show it. What exactly was happening within him, only a few people would know.”Zomato’s acquisitionIn exactly 10 months after the metamorphosis to instant delivery and six months after the rebranding, Zomato acquired Blinkit for $568mn deal. By this time, Blinkit was aggressively expanding its product categories. From books to iPhones to Playstations, everything that was never heard of being delivered in 10 minutes was made available on Blinkit.Interestingly, around this time Dhindsa, a social media-shy person, also made a landing on Instagram. Even his Twitter handle became more lively. He even started anchoring shows for the in-house YouTube series, Blinkit Pitstop, and interviewed people like Raghuram Rajan and Chetan Bhagat.Watch: Blinkit Pitstop featuring Chetan Bhagat medium nocaptionhttp://youtu.be/6UQp9Vv4X8w?si=-xQ4-sQ9qwMUP4AbMeanwhile, the quick-commerce business also turned contribution-positive in the second quarter of FY24 for the first time. It didn’t take much time for the scepticism to subside.From once being called a struggling grocery-delivery firm, Blinkit is now regarded to be more valuable than its parent company.The importance of both Blinkit and Dhindsa in Zomato’s scheme of things was evident in the hour-long call with analysts earlier this month. About 90% of the queries made were about quick commerce. Even though Goyal was present on the call, all the answers were given by Dhindsa and CFO Akshant Goyal.The people’s personAccording to people closely involved with the two companies, as compared to Blinkit, Zomato has better execution machinery. Dhindsa is predisposed to building businesses on deeper personal bonds and team comradery. Multiple people ET Prime spoke to for this story had this to say, “Banda achcha hai [He is a good person].”“He is willing to deal with inefficiencies and believes in giving full mandate to people. According to him, you just have to explain it to people and let them figure out a solution themselves,” said one of the persons quoted above.A Punjabi at heart, Dhindsa loves Punjabi music and a good conversation around luxury cars and sneakers. He is often seen at his desk by 9.30am and stays back till 7.30pm. His work is a mixture of being at his desk in the middle of people and conducting one-on-one meetings. He also joins some meetings just as an observer.It may have been the conviction of Goyal — then the incoming investor who later became the acquirer — that set things in motion at Blinkit when it came to its make-or-break 10-minute delivery pivot.But it was Dhindsa who eventually championed the quick-delivery game.Without Blinkit’s domain expertise, Zomato wouldn’t be boasting such impressive grocery numbers today. Remember, Zomato’s previous two attempts at grocery delivery flopped spectacularly.But the coming together of Blinkit and Zomato was not entirely smooth and involved some personal cost for Dhindsa. Besides scrutiny and criticism, the steep cut in Blinkit’s valuation at the time of acquisition brought down the Zomato shares, which he got in the share-swap deal. But what followed was indeed a purple patch.“It was a kind of distress sale, but you got to give it to him. He stuck around,” said a former executive of Blinkit who worked very closely with Dhindsa.“If people are saying something, let them. As long as you are alive, someday, something will happen,” is what he would say during difficult times. It seems it did.Dhindsa and Zomato did not respond to queries for this story.