Quick commerce turns the corner; Karan Taurani picks Eternal, Trent, and Nykaa as top consumption bets

India's internet and consumption sectors are at a turning point. The era of growth-at-all-costs is over, and companies that can deliver profitability at scale are pulling away from the pack. That is the central message from Karan Taurani, EVP at Elara Securities, who laid out his views on quick commerce, QSR, retail, and the best ways to play India's consumption story over the next 12 months, in an interview with ET Now.

Quick commerce: profit finally takes centre stage

Both Eternal (formerly Zomato) and Swiggy have started pivoting hard toward profitability, even at the cost of headline growth rates. Taurani sees this as a natural and inevitable shift.

"In the 14th to 15th year of operation, even global companies like Amazon shifted gears toward profitability," he noted, drawing a direct parallel to where India's quick commerce players stand today.


Growth rates are settling into a more sustainable range, around 40–60% for most players, but the structural story remains intact. Quick commerce currently accounts for just 10% of India's e-commerce market, and the entry of Amazon and Flipkart into the space is, counterintuitively, a validation rather than a threat.

Blinkit versus Instamart: the gap is structural, not temporary

On the profitability race between Blinkit and Swiggy's Instamart, Taurani was direct. Blinkit reached contribution breakeven and then achieved EBITDA breakeven within four to five quarters. Instamart, by his estimate, is tracking significantly behind, likely six to eight quarters away from EBITDA breakeven even after hitting contribution breakeven in Q1 FY27.

The reason is structural: Blinkit operates at a higher take rate, larger scale, and a faster store rollout pace. Quick commerce, Taurani stressed, is entirely a game of scale and throughput per store.

His portfolio preference reflects this clearly — 80% weightage toward Eternal over Swiggy, given Blinkit's market leadership, margin levers, and store network advantage. With price wars now fading and Amazon and Flipkart showing no appetite for irrational discounting, execution quality becomes the differentiator — and that favours Eternal.

QSR: a tactical recovery, not a structural turnaround

The quick service restaurant sector is showing signs of life after six to eight quarters of sharp same-store sales declines. Taurani attributes the uptick to three factors: base effect reversals, aggressive price cuts by global QSR chains that now sit at a discount to newer local competitors, and raw material inflation that will hurt smaller chains more than large ones.

However, he is careful to frame this as a tactical play of six to nine months, not a structural re-rating. The base effect is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and investors should not confuse cyclical recovery with a durable trend shift.

Retail: Trent over DMart, with a clear 15–18% upside case

In the retail space, Taurani makes a compelling case for Trent. After a period of growth compression — from 25–30% down to 16–17% in some quarters — strong store additions in FY26 and recovering like-for-like sales at both Zudio and Westside set up a potential re-rating. He sees 15–18% upside from current levels, with valuations still under 60 times earnings.

DMart, by contrast, has already re-rated sharply after 85 new store additions in FY26 and now trades around 67–68 times FY28 earnings. With online grocery penetration still under 5% but intensely contested, DMart's like-for-like growth looks capped. Risk-reward at this valuation is unfavourable, in Taurani's view.

The three-stock consumption playbook for FY26

Taurani's picks for the next 12 months are Eternal, Trent, and Nykaa. Eternal captures the quick commerce profitability re-rating. Trent offers a growth recovery story with protected margins. Nykaa — a premium beauty and personal care platform growing at around 25% — is a longer-dated compounding story, with Taurani flagging a potential price of ₹350 on a roll-forward to FY29.Sonnet 4.6