Blinkit rolls out 10-minute ambulance service in Gurugram

Zomato-owned quick commerce platform Blinkit has introduced a 10-minute ambulance service, starting in Gurugram, its chief executive Albinder Dhindsa said on Thursday.“We are taking our first step towards solving the problem of providing quick and reliable ambulance service in our cities. The first five ambulances will be on the road in Gurugram starting today,” Dhinda wrote in a post on microblogging site X.

Consumers will soon have the option to request an ambulance through the Blinkit app as the service extends to more locations. According to Dhindsa, the platform plans to expand this service to all major cities within the next two years.

“Our ambulances are equipped with essential life-saving equipment, including oxygen cylinders, AED (automated external defibrillator), stretcher, monitor, suction machine, and essential emergency medicines and injections,” he said. Each ambulance will also have a paramedic and an assistant.

Dhindsa said that the ambulance service will be available at “affordable cost” and it will invest more in this area for the longer term.

Several emergency health services startups have raised funding over the past few years. These include Medulance which raised $3 million in April led by Alkemi Growth Capital and Red Health, which raised $20 million in a funding round in May led by Jungle Ventures, with participation from Alteria Capital, HealthQuad and HealthX.

This comes at a time when quick commerce platforms have been increasingly trying to broaden their offerings to create more use cases.

Apart from the sale of groceries and other consumer goods, Blinkit has also earlier launched services such as deliveries of printouts and passport-size photographs.

Recently, the company forayed into the 10-minute food delivery space with a standalone app Bistro. Other platforms, like Swiggy, through Bolt, and Zepto, through Café, are also offering 10-minute food delivery services.

On December 31, BigBasket cofounder Hari Menon said that the company will soon introduce food delivery services and plans to launch pharmaceutical deliveries in partnership with epharmacy platform Tata 1mg.

Blinkit reported a gross order value (GOV) of Rs 6,132 crore for the September quarter. The quick commerce market in India is expected to be worth $42-55 billion by 2030, as per a recent report by Morgan Stanley.

ET has also been reporting on how quick commerce platforms are increasingly acting as horizontal online marketplaces by broadening their product offerings to include apparel and lifestyle items. These platforms are also working to tackle challenges associated with online fashion shopping, such as returns and exchanges.