Blinkit Ambulance to charge Rs 2,500 for non-emergency trips; emergency service will stay free: Deepinder Goyal

Blinkit Ambulance, a medical response service operated through the quick commerce app, will begin charging Rs 2,500 for non-emergency ambulance transfers, while emergency trips will remain free. Deepinder Goyal, vice chairman of Blinkit parent Eternal, announced the development in a post on X on Thursday.

Goyal said Blinkit Ambulance has served about 42,000 cases in the last two years, of which roughly 20,000 were emergencies. None were charged but a growing share of bookings were for routine checkups, hospital visits and hospital-to-home transfers, trips that “an Uber or private transport could have handled just as easily,” he said.



"We hope that this charge will dramatically drop the usage of our Ambulances for non-emergency cases. 10-minute ambulances have saved and can save thousands of lives, and we need to keep them available for emergencies that need them the most," the post read.

Each non-emergency booking, he argued, keeps a fully equipped ambulance with paramedics off the road when a life may depend on it.

The quick commerce platform introduced the 10-minute ambulance service in select areas of Gurugram in January 2025 as part of a pilot project.

Details

1) Emergency transfers remain free.

2) Non-emergency transfers will cost Rs 2,500, charged after the trip.

3) The fee is, as per Goyal, broadly in line with what private ambulances charge.

4) The money will go to the Eternal Foundation, which runs the ambulances and will use it to expand the service.

Expansion plans

Goyal said the biggest bottleneck in scaling up the service is finding trained, empathetic paramedics. He said the company’s training academy is expanding as fast as it can. "@albinder (Eternal CEO Albinder Dhindsa) and team are committed to bringing Blinkit Ambulance to all major cities in India in the next 2-4 years," he wrote.