Zepto and Blinkit ads agency: when should a D2C brand hire one?

A D2C brand should hire a Zepto and Blinkit ads agency only when its stock is already in the cities it advertises in. What an ads agency covers, what it cannot fix, and five questions to ask first.

Hire a Zepto and Blinkit ads agency once your product is in stock in the cities you want to advertise in, and you also sell on other platforms. If your stock is thin or your listing is not live yet, ads will not fix that. An ads agency runs ads. Your inventory stays with you.

Most of the decision comes down to that.

An ads agency cannot fix a stockout

Quick commerce delivers from a dark store near the buyer. If an ad shows in a city where your product is out of stock, you pay for a click from someone who cannot order. Blinkit lets you target all the way down to one city, so set targeting by where your stock is, city by city.

Agencies sell quick commerce in two ways. Some take the whole channel: onboarding, catalogue, pricing, inventory and ads. Others take only the ads. Either can be right for you, but you need to know which one you are signing. We run the ads. Onboarding, catalogue, inventory and dark-store availability stay with you, and we tell you that before you sign.

Hire an agency when you sell on Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart and also on Amazon or Flipkart

If you have one product line in a few cities, run it yourself. Blinkit and Zepto both sell ads through their own self-serve tools, and the setup is easy enough.

It gets harder when the same product sits on three quick commerce apps and two marketplaces. Somebody has to decide where each rupee goes, and they can only do that by comparing every platform on profit per order. One team running all of it pays for itself in that situation.

Quick commerce ROAS needs a paid-versus-organic check

The shopper is already searching and ready to buy, so quick commerce ROAS usually looks high. Some of those orders would have happened without the ad. Ask the agency to put paid orders beside organic orders for one city and one week. The gap between them is what the ads added.

Ask for the agency fee on a separate line from the ad budget

Your ad budget goes to the platform and the fee goes to the agency. Get both numbers in writing, and ask what the fee covers.

For a reference point, Media Ant publishes that advertising on Zepto starts at ₹10,000 to ₹25,000 for smaller campaigns (themediaant.com, Zepto advertising cost page, read 2 October 2026). That is ad spend. The agency fee comes on top.

Ours: a fixed fee of ₹25,000 a month plus GST, which is half our usual rate, plus 5% to 10% of marketplace revenue, set per brand. It covers ads on every platform we run for you, quick commerce included. Additional services cost extra.

Five questions to ask before you hire a Zepto and Blinkit ads agency

Do you run only the ads, or catalogue and inventory too? Get it in writing.
Which cities will you advertise in, and how do you check stock before you spend?
Can you show paid and organic orders side by side for one city and one week?
Who owns the ad account and the reports, and can I see them whenever I want?
Do you also run my Amazon and Flipkart ads, and can you put all of them on one profit number?

What this means for you

If your stock is in the cities you want and you sell on several platforms, hire an agency that runs all of them. If stock is your problem, sort that out first. If you sell one line in two cities, run it yourself for a month and keep the reports, so you know what to ask an agency for later.

See how we run Zepto ads and Blinkit ads, and how our revenue share plan works.