1 November 2026 • 5 min read
This sheet is for product managers and founders who read quick commerce results and need to know what each metric counts. The definitions come from the glossaries in two listed companies' shareholder letters for the quarter ended 30 September 2026: Swiggy (Instamart) and Eternal (Blinkit). Where the two companies define a term differently, the sheet says so. Both are companies' own reporting measures, not accounting standards, so compare them across companies with care.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Orders | Swiggy counts total completed Quick Commerce orders. Eternal counts all orders placed on the Blinkit platform in India, including cancelled orders. The two totals are not like for like. |
| Gross Order Value (GOV) | Value of orders at maximum retail price (MRP), before any discounts, plus delivery charges, packaging charges, fees from users and taxes, excluding tips. For items with no MRP, such as fruit and vegetables, the final selling price is used. Swiggy and Eternal both start from MRP; their lists of added charges differ slightly, so read each letter's wording. |
| Net Order Value (NOV) | GOV less all discounts, whether funded by the platform, brands or sellers. Swiggy says discounts on non-grocery items are typically much higher than on grocery, so as the non-grocery mix grows NOV gives a better picture of what customers spend on its platform. |
| Average Order Value (AOV) | GOV divided by the number of orders. |
| Net AOV (nAOV or NAOV) | NOV divided by the number of orders. |
| NOV as a % of GOV | A Swiggy table row. It was 71% for Instamart in Q2 FY27, against 74% in the previous quarter. |
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Dark store | Swiggy writes it as one word, "darkstore". Neither letter gives a separate plain definition of the term; each defines how it counts the stores that are active. |
| Active Dark Stores (Swiggy) | Dark stores with at least one completed order on the last day of the period. This is an exit count, so a store that opened and closed inside the quarter is not in it. |
| Active Dark Store Area (Swiggy) | Total area of those active dark stores on the last day of the period. Q2 FY27 was 5.21 million sq ft. |
| Orders per dark store per day (Swiggy) | Swiggy's utilisation measure. It is based on active darkstore-days, so orders are linked only to the period a store has been active. It was 1,192 in Q2 FY27. |
| GOV per unit area (Swiggy) | Listed in rupees per sq ft. It was 17,730 in Q2 FY27. The letter gives no separate definition; the label says what it is. |
| Average NOV per day, per store (Eternal) | A simple average of total NOV transacted on a day, divided by the total number of stores operating that day, for the period. Eternal also reports an equivalent GOV figure. |
| Store count (Eternal) | Blinkit added 308 net new stores in Q2 FY27, taking the total to 2,751. |
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Contribution | Swiggy: Quick Commerce Adjusted Revenue, less delivery and other charges, platform-funded discounts, cost of fulfilment services and other variable costs, as a percentage of GOV. Eternal lists its own cost items, including wastage losses, customer refund cost, packaging cost, payment gateway charges and support cost. Check the cost list before comparing the two. |
| Early-store cost | Swiggy says the under-utilisation cost of new stores is expensed in contribution in their first one or two quarters. A fast store rollout lowers contribution in the short run. |
| Adjusted EBITDA | Eternal: EBITDA plus share-based payment expense, minus rent paid on leases under Ind AS 116. Swiggy: the Quick Commerce segment result as per its financials, less rental expenses on Ind AS 116 leases. The two are close but not the same. |
| Revenue and 1P | When a company owns the stock it sells, revenue includes the full value of goods sold. When it runs a marketplace, revenue is mostly commission. Eternal notes that its Adjusted Revenue growth rose sharply mainly because of Blinkit's shift to the 1P model. |
| Like-for-like (LFL) revenue | Eternal's version strips out cost of goods sold on own-inventory sales, so 1P and marketplace quarters can be compared. |
| Monthly transacting users or customers | Unique users or customers with at least one quick commerce order in a month, averaged across the months of the period. |
Fill rate, picker time and order density are common in vendor decks and job posts. Neither shareholder letter defines them. Eternal's letter mentions "picker assignment" in a description of how an order moves, and says cost to serve each order falls as density builds, but gives no formula. If a deck quotes one of these, ask for the numerator, the denominator and the period before you use the number.
For how stores and picking affect unit economics, see Quick commerce product metrics and Dark store location algorithms.
Eternal reports Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of NOV, while Swiggy reports contribution as a percentage of GOV. Same words, different denominators.
No. NOV is what customers pay for goods and fees after discounts. Revenue is what the company books, which depends on whether it sells from its own stock or earns a commission.
Under Swiggy's definition, only stores with an order on the last day of the period are counted. Stores that closed before then are not.
Orders per dark store per day (Swiggy) or average NOV per day, per store (Eternal). Both divide by store-days, not by the quarter-end store count.
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