No more free Blinkit ambulance rides for all: Deepinder Goyal announces ₹2,500 charge

An ambulance is meant to reach someone when every minute matters. But what happens when the same vehicle is booked for a routine hospital visit or a trip back home after discharge? It may not be available when someone needs urgent medical attention.

That is the problem Blinkit is now trying to address. The company will continue to provide emergency ambulance transfers free of charge, but non-emergency bookings will now cost ₹2,500. The fee will be collected after the journey and is broadly in line with what private ambulance operators charge.

Announcing the change, Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal said in a post on X, "Emergency transfers - free, as always. Non-emergency transfers - ₹2,500, charged after the trip."

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Why Blinkit is charging for routine ambulance rides

Goyal said Blinkit Ambulance has served around 20,000 emergency cases in the last two years, with approximately 42,000 cases in total. The service has not charged users for any of these trips so far.

However, he said the company is seeing a growing number of bookings for routine check-ups, hospital visits and hospital-to-home transfers.

"With everything free, a growing share of bookings are for routine checkups, hospital visits and hospital-to-home transfers, trips that an Uber or private transport could have handled just as easily," Goyal wrote.

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This is a concern for an emergency ambulance network, he added, "Every such booking keeps a fully equipped emergency ambulance with paramedics off the road when someone's life may depend on it."

The ₹2,500 charge is intended to reduce the use of ambulances for non-emergency journeys. Goyal said the money will go to the Eternal Foundation, which operates the service and will use the funds to scale it further.

Blinkit plans to expand ambulance service to more cities

Blinkit's plans extend beyond changing its pricing model. Goyal said the company is committed to bringing its ambulance service to all major Indian cities over the next two to four years.

However, he acknowledged that expansion comes with its own challenges. "The biggest bottleneck is trained, empathetic paramedics," he said, adding that the company's training academy is scaling up without compromising on quality.

Goyal also stressed why keeping ambulances available matters, saying, "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."

Editorial note: The quotes above are taken directly from the text of Goyal’s post you shared. I've kept the figures as he stated them: approximately 20,000 emergency cases and 42,000 total cases.