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Eternal’s strong Q2 report; Exits outpace hiring at top IT firms
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Happy Thursday! Eternal’s Q2 revenue surged on Blinkit’s growth. This and more in today’s ETtech Morning Dispatch.
Also in the letter:
■ Qualcomm layoffs’ India impact
■ MyGate-Adonmo merger
■ Govt takes note of eMudhra incident
Albinder Dhindsa, CEO, Eternal
Food and grocery delivery company Eternal reported a 78% year-on-year increase in operating revenue for the July-September quarter, beating Street estimates.
Financials:
Blinkit continued to aggressively add dark stores and expects to exceed its March 2027 target of 3,000 stores by 500, with plans to expand to 5,000 micro warehouses by March 2028.
CEO’s take: After several quarters of heightened competitive intensity, Eternal’s quick commerce business Blinkit is seeing “predictable levels” of competition, CEO Albinder Dhindsa said. He added that the business would continue to see accelerated growth over the coming quarters.
Going-out biz: Eternal vice chairman Deepinder Goyal also outlined expectations around agentic AI tools, saying Blinkit and Zomato sit in the low-risk zone against the threat of agentic commerce, while District, the dining out, events and ticketing business, sits in the medium-to-high risk zone.
Deepinder Goyal, vice chairman, Eternal
District’s NOV growth is trending at 50% YoY, against earlier guidance of 30%
Private labels: Blinkit does not see a compelling case for expanding private labels to improve margins or drive additional demand, Eternal CEO Albinder Dhindsa said in a letter to shareholders.
Goyal also teased a new artificial intelligence product called Dark.ai, which is being developed by the Gurugram-based company.
What's Dark: The new AI assistant Eternal is building will keep user conversations private even from its makers. Goyal said Dark uses end-to-end encryption, and that Eternal would not be able to access user chats "even if we are forced to."
Across India’s top technology services companies, exits are outpacing new hires in the IT and engineering functions.
Numbers game: Over the past year, TCS, Infosys, HCLTech, Wipro, Tech Mahindra and LTIMindtree collectively recorded 92,000 exits, in line with the industry’s normal attrition rate of 11-15%.
However, with exits outpacing hiring of new employees in the IT and engineering functions in five of the last six months, overall intake over the 12 months fell by 24,422 to 68,000, data from staffing firm Xpheno showed.
Expert take: “The collective count of talent in these functions has gradually dropped,” said Francis Padamadan, chief executive of Xpheno. “Annual attrition has remained at 11–15%, but companies haven’t necessarily refilled attrited seats.”
AI impact: Staffing firm TeamLease Digital said the decline reflects workforce optimisation and changing technology requirements, with AI reducing the need for routine work in some traditional IT roles.
Experts told us the squeeze on traditional roles is happening alongside demand for specialised skills. AI, cloud, cybersecurity and specialised engineering roles are growing at around 16% year-on-year while overall IT hiring has declined by 3%.
Cristiano Amon, CEO, Qualcomm
US chipmaker Qualcomm could slash 600 to 1,200 jobs in India as part of a global, performance-led restructuring, putting 3-6% of its roughly 20,000-strong local workforce at risk, according to industry estimates.
Driving the news: Estimates differ on the scale of the impact in India.
Hiring continues: The potential reductions come even as Qualcomm continues to hire in India, which has overtaken the US as the company’s largest engineering and R&D base globally. The company has about 600 open positions in the country, compared with about 350 in the US, experts said.
Background: In a memo to staff, CEO Cristiano Amon said the company will cut jobs in a "performance-focused reduction" following its annual employee reviews. One of the world's biggest smartphone chipmakers, Qualcomm has been hit this year by a slump in consumer electronics sales as soaring memory prices weigh on demand in key markets.
Mygate, Eternal-backed digital ads firm to merge: Housing society management platform Mygate and Eternal-backed digital advertising company Adonmo are merging in an all-stock deal that will create a combined entity with Rs 500 crore in annual revenues.
eMudhra hit by cyber snafu: The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) has formed a special team to investigate a security incident at the Bengaluru-based cybersecurity company eMudhra, though its impact on Indian websites and applications was “very limited and for a very short interval.”
Global Picks We Are Reading
■ Rockets, robots and risk: Elon Musk’s $3.6 trillion gamble to merge Tesla and SpaceX (FT)
■ Data centers have a new PR plan: Kids’ field trip (Wired)
■ Don’t be fooled—LLMs don’t reason (MIT Technology Review)
Also in the letter:
■ Qualcomm layoffs’ India impact
■ MyGate-Adonmo merger
■ Govt takes note of eMudhra incident
Eternal’s Q2 revenue jumps 78% on quick commerce growth; profit misses estimates
Food and grocery delivery company Eternal reported a 78% year-on-year increase in operating revenue for the July-September quarter, beating Street estimates.
Financials:
- Net profit: Nearly doubled to Rs 125 crore.
- Operating revenue: Rs 24,138 crore, up 78%.
- Total expenses: Increased 75% to Rs 24,166 crore from Rs 13,813 crore a year earlier.
- Ebitda: Up 26.6% QoQ to Rs 752 crore, from Rs 594 crore in Q1FY27. Ebitda margin expanded to 3.15% from 2.95% in the previous quarter.
Blinkit continued to aggressively add dark stores and expects to exceed its March 2027 target of 3,000 stores by 500, with plans to expand to 5,000 micro warehouses by March 2028.
CEO’s take: After several quarters of heightened competitive intensity, Eternal’s quick commerce business Blinkit is seeing “predictable levels” of competition, CEO Albinder Dhindsa said. He added that the business would continue to see accelerated growth over the coming quarters.
Going-out biz: Eternal vice chairman Deepinder Goyal also outlined expectations around agentic AI tools, saying Blinkit and Zomato sit in the low-risk zone against the threat of agentic commerce, while District, the dining out, events and ticketing business, sits in the medium-to-high risk zone.
District’s NOV growth is trending at 50% YoY, against earlier guidance of 30%
Private labels: Blinkit does not see a compelling case for expanding private labels to improve margins or drive additional demand, Eternal CEO Albinder Dhindsa said in a letter to shareholders.
Goyal also teased a new artificial intelligence product called Dark.ai, which is being developed by the Gurugram-based company.
What's Dark: The new AI assistant Eternal is building will keep user conversations private even from its makers. Goyal said Dark uses end-to-end encryption, and that Eternal would not be able to access user chats "even if we are forced to."
Software majors delete 24,000 jobs across IT and engineering in a year
Across India’s top technology services companies, exits are outpacing new hires in the IT and engineering functions.
Numbers game: Over the past year, TCS, Infosys, HCLTech, Wipro, Tech Mahindra and LTIMindtree collectively recorded 92,000 exits, in line with the industry’s normal attrition rate of 11-15%.
However, with exits outpacing hiring of new employees in the IT and engineering functions in five of the last six months, overall intake over the 12 months fell by 24,422 to 68,000, data from staffing firm Xpheno showed.
Expert take: “The collective count of talent in these functions has gradually dropped,” said Francis Padamadan, chief executive of Xpheno. “Annual attrition has remained at 11–15%, but companies haven’t necessarily refilled attrited seats.”
AI impact: Staffing firm TeamLease Digital said the decline reflects workforce optimisation and changing technology requirements, with AI reducing the need for routine work in some traditional IT roles.
Experts told us the squeeze on traditional roles is happening alongside demand for specialised skills. AI, cloud, cybersecurity and specialised engineering roles are growing at around 16% year-on-year while overall IT hiring has declined by 3%.
Qualcomm may cut 1,200 Indian jobs as part of global rejig
US chipmaker Qualcomm could slash 600 to 1,200 jobs in India as part of a global, performance-led restructuring, putting 3-6% of its roughly 20,000-strong local workforce at risk, according to industry estimates.
Driving the news: Estimates differ on the scale of the impact in India.
- EIIRTrend is projecting more than 1,000 job cuts.
- UnearthInsight expects fewer than 3% of the local workforce to be affected.
Hiring continues: The potential reductions come even as Qualcomm continues to hire in India, which has overtaken the US as the company’s largest engineering and R&D base globally. The company has about 600 open positions in the country, compared with about 350 in the US, experts said.
Background: In a memo to staff, CEO Cristiano Amon said the company will cut jobs in a "performance-focused reduction" following its annual employee reviews. One of the world's biggest smartphone chipmakers, Qualcomm has been hit this year by a slump in consumer electronics sales as soaring memory prices weigh on demand in key markets.
Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
Mygate, Eternal-backed digital ads firm to merge: Housing society management platform Mygate and Eternal-backed digital advertising company Adonmo are merging in an all-stock deal that will create a combined entity with Rs 500 crore in annual revenues.
eMudhra hit by cyber snafu: The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) has formed a special team to investigate a security incident at the Bengaluru-based cybersecurity company eMudhra, though its impact on Indian websites and applications was “very limited and for a very short interval.”
Global Picks We Are Reading
■ Rockets, robots and risk: Elon Musk’s $3.6 trillion gamble to merge Tesla and SpaceX (FT)
■ Data centers have a new PR plan: Kids’ field trip (Wired)
■ Don’t be fooled—LLMs don’t reason (MIT Technology Review)
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I agree to receive newsletters and marketing communications via e-mail