Adaptive real-time performance tuning — fewer ANRs, smoother UX, and smarter device-specific optimization

Picture this: Your app runs buttery-smooth on Pixel 7 Pro while throwing ANRs on a Redmi Note 4. Users on a Fold 6 have to experience the same janky transitions as those on a ₹6,000 device. Sounds familiar?

Welcome to Android development in 2025, where device fragmentation is one of the biggest challenges.

This is the story of how Blinkit solved Android’s most notorious problem: intelligent, real-time performance adaptation.

📱 The Problem: One Codebase, Infinite Devices

Device Fragmentation isn’t just a developer headache — it’s a business liability.

At Blinkit, we serve millions of users across India’s most diverse Android ecosystem, from ultra-budget to flagship devices.

Consider these jaw-dropping stats from our production data:

• 57% of total OOMs occur on devices with less than 4GB of RAM
• The average time to render key screens is 2.5 times slower on budget phones compared to flagships
• 20% of users drop off after experiencing a single ANR

Traditional solutions? They’re all broken:

🔴 The Conservative Trap: Design for the weakest device. Result? Premium users get a subpar experience.

🔴 The Aggressive Fallacy: Optimize for flagships. Result? 60% of users face OOMs and ANRs.

We needed something better — something smarter, that could make apps think about performance in real-time.

🔥 Introducing: Droid Dex

Imagine your app could sense the device it’s running on and instantly adapt:

“This phone can handle 4 concurrent videos, aggressive caching, and premium transitions” or “This device needs power-saving mode, minimal caching, and simplified animations”?

That’s exactly what Droid Dex does. It’s not just another performance library — it’s an intelligent performance classification system that lets your app adapt to its environment.

// Make your app performance-aware with a single call
DroidDex.getPerformanceLevelLd(PerformanceClass.CPU)
    .observe(this) { level ->
        when (level) {
            PerformanceLevel.EXCELLENT -> enableBeastMode()
            PerformanceLevel.LOW -> activateSurvivalMode()
            else -> runBalancedMode()
        }
    }

🪄 The Science Behind the Magic

Droid Dex continuously monitors five critical performance dimensions:

enum class PerformanceClass {
    CPU,        // Total RAM, Core Count, CPU Frequency
    MEMORY,     // Heap Limit, Heap Remaining, Available RAM
    NETWORK,    // Bandwidth Strength, Download Speed, Signal Strength
    STORAGE,    // Available Storage
    BATTERY     // Remaining Charge + Charging Status + Health
}

Each dimension gets classified into four performance tiers:

• 🚀 EXCELLENT: Premium flagship territory
• ⚡ HIGH: Solid mid-range performance
• 🔄 AVERAGE: Budget-friendly reliability
• 🚨 LOW: Survival mode activated

But here’s what truly sets Droid Dex apart: Contextual Weighting.

Most libraries or apps treat all performance dimensions equally. That’s like saying CPU matters as much as battery for a photo editor, or network speed is as critical as storage for an offline game. That’s rarely the case.

Droid Dex helps you define what “performance” means for your specific use case:

// For image-heavy e-commerce feeds
val imageLoadingProfile = DroidDex.getWeightedPerformanceLevelLd(
    PerformanceClass.NETWORK to 3.0f,    // Network is king
    PerformanceClass.MEMORY to 2.0f,     // Memory for bitmap handling
    PerformanceClass.STORAGE to 1.0f     // Storage for caching
)

// For video streaming features  
val videoStreamingProfile = DroidDex.getWeightedPerformanceLevelLd(
    PerformanceClass.CPU to 2.5f,        // Decoding power
    PerformanceClass.NETWORK to 2.0f,    // Streaming bandwidth
    PerformanceClass.BATTERY to 1.5f     // Power consumption
)

Your app becomes contextually intelligent rather than blindly generic.

⚔️ Battle-Tested at Blinkit Scale

Theory is cheap. Production data is priceless. Here’s how Droid Dex performs in the real world, serving millions daily:

🎯 1: Adaptive Image Quality

E-commerce apps live or die by image quality. Too high? Budget devices lag. Too low? Conversion drops. Nailing the balance:

class ImageLoader {
    
    fun loadProductImage(imageUrl: String, imageView: ImageView) {
        val performanceLevel = DroidDex.getWeightedPerformanceLevel(
            PerformanceClass.NETWORK to 2.5f,  // Bandwidth is critical
            PerformanceClass.MEMORY to 2.0f,   // Bitmap memory pressure
            PerformanceClass.STORAGE to 1.0f   // Cache availability
        )

        val config = when (performanceLevel) {
            PerformanceLevel.EXCELLENT -> ImageConfig(
                quality = 95,
                format = "avif",
                resolution = "2048x2048",
                enableProgressiveLoading = true
            )
            PerformanceLevel.HIGH -> ImageConfig(
                quality = 85,
                format = "webp", 
                resolution = "1024x1024",
                enableProgressiveLoading = true
            )
            PerformanceLevel.AVERAGE -> ImageConfig(
                quality = 70,
                format = "jpg",
                resolution = "512x512",
                enableProgressiveLoading = false
            )
            PerformanceLevel.LOW -> ImageConfig(
                quality = 50,
                format = "jpg",
                resolution = "256x256",
                enableProgressiveLoading = false
            )
        }
        
        // Load the image using config
    }
}

🧠 2: Smarter Caching

API response caching is a double-edged sword. Cache aggressively on a 2GB RAM device? Instant death. Cache conservatively on an 8GB flagship? Missed opportunities. Our approach:

class APICacheHelper {
    
    private val dynamicCacheSize: Int
        get() {
            return when(DroidDex.getPerformanceLevel(PerformanceClass.MEMORY)) {
                PerformanceLevel.EXCELLENT -> {
                    val networkLevel = DroidDex.getPerformanceLevel(PerformanceClass.NETWORK)
                    
                    if (networkLevel <= PerformanceLevel.AVERAGE) {
                        40 * 1024 * 1024  // 40MB - aggressive caching for slow networks
                    } else {
                        30 * 1024 * 1024  // 30MB - balanced approach
                    }
                }
                PerformanceLevel.HIGH -> 20 * 1024 * 1024      // 20MB
                PerformanceLevel.AVERAGE -> 10 * 1024 * 1024   // 10MB  
                PerformanceLevel.LOW -> 0                      // Disable Caching
                else -> 10 * 1024 * 1024 // fallback
            }
        }
    
    private val intelligentCache by lazy {
        object : LruCache<String, ApiResponse>(dynamicCacheSize) {
            // Actual Implementation
        }
    }
    
    fun cacheResponse(key: String, response: ApiResponse) {
        val memoryPressure = DroidDex.getPerformanceLevel(PerformanceClass.MEMORY)

        // Skip caching on critically low memory devices
        if (memoryPressure == PerformanceLevel.LOW) {
            intelligentCache.clear()
            return
        }

        intelligentCache.resize(dynamicCacheSize)
        
        // Cache the response
    }
}

🎬 3: Video Playback That Knows Its Limits

Product videos drive engagement. But playing too many of those simultaneously on a budget device? Say hello to ANRs. Our video playback manager is context-aware:

class VideoPlaybackManager {
    
    private val maxConcurrentVideos: Int
        get() {
            val cpuLevel = DroidDex.getPerformanceLevel(PerformanceClass.CPU)
            val memoryLevel = DroidDex.getPerformanceLevel(PerformanceClass.MEMORY)
            val batteryLevel = DroidDex.getPerformanceLevel(PerformanceClass.BATTERY)
            
            return when {
                // Beast mode
                cpuLevel >= PerformanceLevel.HIGH && 
                memoryLevel >= PerformanceLevel.HIGH && 
                batteryLevel >= PerformanceLevel.AVERAGE -> 4
                
                // Balanced mode
                cpuLevel >= PerformanceLevel.AVERAGE && 
                memoryLevel >= PerformanceLevel.AVERAGE -> 2
                
                // Survival mode: One video at a time
                else -> 1
            }
        }
    
    // Real-time adaptation to changing conditions
    private fun monitorPerformanceChanges() {
        DroidDex.getPerformanceLevelLd(
            PerformanceClass.CPU, 
            PerformanceClass.MEMORY, 
            PerformanceClass.BATTERY
        ).observe(lifecycleOwner) { _ ->
            val idealVideoCount = maxConcurrentVideos
            val currentVideoCount = activeVideoPlayers.size
            
            when {
                currentVideoCount > idealVideoCount -> {
                    // Performance degraded - cleanup least important videos
                    cleanupExcessVideos(currentVideoCount - idealVideoCount)
                }
                currentVideoCount < idealVideoCount && queuedVideos.isNotEmpty() -> {
                    // Performance improved - play queued videos
                    playQueuedVideos(idealVideoCount - currentVideoCount)
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

✨ 4: UI Transitions That Don’t Kill UX

Beautiful animations and shared element transitions create premium experiences. But they can also degrade performance on low-end devices. Our solution is adaptive:

class AnimationManager {
    
    data class AnimationProfile(
        val enableSharedTransitions: Boolean,
        val animationDuration: Long,
        val enableParallaxEffects: Boolean
    )
    
    private val animationProfile: AnimationProfile
        get() {
            val cpuLevel = DroidDex.getPerformanceLevel(PerformanceClass.CPU)
            val memoryLevel = DroidDex.getPerformanceLevel(PerformanceClass.MEMORY)
            val batteryLevel = DroidDex.getPerformanceLevel(PerformanceClass.BATTERY)

            return when {
                // Premium experience for capable devices
                cpuLevel >= PerformanceLevel.HIGH && 
                memoryLevel >= PerformanceLevel.HIGH && 
                batteryLevel >= PerformanceLevel.AVERAGE -> {
                    AnimationProfile(
                        enableSharedTransitions = true,
                        animationDuration = 350L,
                        enableParallaxEffects = true
                    )
                }

                // Balanced experience  
                cpuLevel >= PerformanceLevel.AVERAGE && 
                memoryLevel >= PerformanceLevel.AVERAGE -> {
                    AnimationProfile(
                        enableSharedTransitions = true,
                        animationDuration = 250L,
                        enableParallaxEffects = false
                    )
                }

                // Simplified experience for budget devices
                else -> {
                    AnimationProfile(
                        enableSharedTransitions = false,
                        animationDuration = 150L,
                        enableParallaxEffects = false
                    )
                }
            }
        }

    // Use the animationProfile to perform actual transitions & animations
}

Why Every Android Developer Needs Droid Dex

❌ Without:

• One-size-fits-none performance
• Frustrated users and lost business
• Wasted potential on flagship devices
• Higher crash rates and ANRs

✅ With:

• Intelligent performance adaptation
• Happier users across all segments
• Maximized potential on every device
• Significantly fewer crashes and ANRs

Stop building for the average. Start building for everyone. Make it adaptive. Make it intelligent.

Power it with Droid Dex.

💡 Note: Droid Dex is open source and actively maintained by the Blinkit Engineering team. We encourage you to share your feedback, use cases, and contributions.

If you found this useful, consider giving the GitHub repository a ⭐️ — it helps others discover the project. Say hello on LinkedIn or follow me on GitHub.

How Blinkit Cracked Android’s Performance Puzzle with Droid Dex was originally published in Lambda by Blinkit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Setting up our Printout Delivery Store has been highly satisfying. At one end is the joy of customers discovering an easy, home-delivered solution for last-minute printouts. But even more enjoyable is the knowledge that we created a nationwide service with only a Raspberry Pi and a seamless print flow that effectively harnesses the power of our instant delivery.

But we did face some challenges along the way. Post-launch, our customers started experiencing many consistency issues, which had to be fixed before we could scale this service. These challenges stemmed from fundamental hardware limitations. Combined with a need for data privacy and security, it led to frequent misses. The root causes were silly things, such as printers not connecting to the Internet, going to sleep, running out of paper, etc. Below are ways we tackled them and made the instant print store a success.

What did we need to do?

We needed to figure out how to tinker with our existing microservices to integrate them with the Print Store. Hence we set aside the following objectives:

• Automation: Start the print process once the order has cleared its payment without manual intervention.
• Security: Delete the files as soon as the print is complete.
• Agile Response System: Build a detection mechanism to act quickly on issues such as paper jams and low toner levels
• 99.9% Uptime: Have No service downtime whatsoever.

Selecting our Hardware — Slice of Pi

We needed inexpensive, IoT-friendly hardware, naturally drawing us to the lean, mean, fruity machine–The Raspberry Pi.

The Pi is the epitome of commodity computing. It’s cost-effective, energy-efficient, easy to set up, and has a ton of support for peripheral connectivity. With the Raspberry Pi, we can also sandbox and package our services to be deployed remotely nationwide.

Our Software Implementation

Store Printing Controller Service

This service is the heart of our operation and runs on our Pi Zeros (running Raspbian OS), plugged into our local printers. It runs bare metal on our Pi hardware, which allows us to scale up and maintain parity among hardware devices.

So, when a customer uploads a document for printing, this service receives data from our backend services, temporarily stores it, and passes it on appropriately. Commands are received in JSON, which are then converted into printer actions such as “double-sided print,” “color print,” and “A4”.

Since the printer cannot send telemetry data to our servers, the controller service handles it. It’s also responsible for retry policies and hardware recovery in case of failures. Our service can also receive binary updates on the fly and over the air, which ensures minimal manual intervention. Building this capability to update remotely is crucial when running a centralized operation pan-India.

Proxy Printing Service

We had to develop middleware that would maintain the persistence of the data sent by the controller. This middleware, our proxy printing service, is in charge of printing all documents. It structures the data from the controller service, queues it, and sends it back to the printing service with retries when needed.

Our Proxy Printing Service is isolated from the Pi and our microservices. This is essentially an insular service with no external awareness and no business intelligence residing here. In fact, this also allows us to package the print store and integrate it with our app.

Printing Service

The Printing Service handles all system-level intelligence and business logic, while the proxy and controller services handle printing. Our Printing Service contains the queueing logic and routes printing requests to the correct local stores.

This service maintains Google’s Remote Procedure Calls or the gRPC framework to connect our internal microservice to our store printing controller. The printer service keeps connections socket-based and exposes endpoints to our internal operations. It also stores the controller’s telemetry and publishes it to a message broker.

Final Touches

Data privacy and security have always been Blinkit’s priority. Given that the Print Store would be handling our customers’ confidential documents, we built the entire operation to ensure that misuse of information was not possible. We developed a secure printing feature that deletes files as soon as they are printed. While we had the option to provide the convenience of maintaining documents for re-printing, we consciously forewent that option. So, if you need to print the same document again (we allow multiple copies in the same order), you will have to upload the document to the print service again, which will get deleted as soon as the print is complete.

What did we create?

We received a ton of customer love for this service–when you really need a print, you really need it. People mentioned that they were using the print store to print visa documents, boarding passes, assignments, and even memes!

We’ve started working on support for passport photos and even t-shirt and poster printing. When this goes live, we’ll be there for all your last-minute printout needs and customised gifts for your loved ones.

A special thanks to Ritik Harchani and Milind Rai Chaudhary who made this blog a reality. Their dedication and efforts have been instrumental in bringing this project to life. Also, thanks to Ashish Sharma for providing the incredible images and artwork that have enhanced the overall visual appeal of the blog.

Ritik is an SDE-1 on the Print Store team; feel free to check out his GitHub and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Milind works as an SDE-2 on the Content team; check out his GitHub, and don’t forget to connect with him on LinkedIn.

Ashish Sharma works as a UX Designer; feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn.

India’s First Instant Print Store was originally published in Lambda by Blinkit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Chinthakunta Sumanth Kumar Reddy is an SDE 3 at Blinkit. He joined us in March 2021 and has since helped us build a resilient application platform at Blinkit. He currently works as a part of Software Resilience Engineering (SRE)–enabling scalable database migrations for Blinkit’s applications.

Tell us about your background and your journey in Blinkit so far.

I have always been curious to learn new things and don’t have barriers as long as I can engage with the task. Hailing from a small village in Andhra Pradesh, I have travelled across several cities (Fun fact: My village and family share the same name). I have been working with the SRE team for almost two years. I love the no-nonsense work culture here, which allowed me to raise PR from day 2 in the company.

Why did you choose to work in tech? What drove you?

Due to my background in the Electronics branch, I have always been fascinated by how the physical transistors click and clack with seemingly intangible software bits. There is a sense of excitement when things spring into action, and I think if there’s an equivalent of magic in our world, it will be Tech.

What excites you the most about your field?

The ability to build resilient software excites me. Imagine seeing a traffic spike and everything scaling up to take the load and winding down when the traffic calms down, all on its own–It’s magical, to say the least.

While solving a problem, what is the principle you always adhere to?

When hit with a problem, take a step back and think through it. Sometimes, it isn’t what it appears to be. Problem-solving is all about perspectives.

What immediate challenges are we trying to solve in the instant commerce space?

Efficiency and localisation.

With delivery timelines moving from days to minutes, there is significantly lesser room for errors. Also, since we are nearer to customers, localisation is the key. For example, a top seller in one area might be utterly irrelevant in its neighbouring one. Little details like these can pose a massive challenge in the big picture.

What are your views on the future of technology in your domain?

I am beyond thrilled to be in DevOps and SRE at the moment. If you see how the world is changing, many more things are coming online: your fridge, your TV, brand new AI like chatGPT, your webcams, and so on. A lot of traditional merchants are onboarding themselves on the Internet. There is an explosion of data mined and needs processing. I think this is the perfect time, if there is one, to be in this domain.

What do you love the most about your role at Blinkit?

Apart from the pleasure of working with motivated individuals in our teams, I thoroughly enjoy the privilege of making a difference with my work — literally and figuratively. As an SRE, I get to see the larger view of things and improve them.

What would you say to a youngster interested in working at Blinkit?

The same advice I would give to my younger self. It doesn’t matter what or how much you know or your background; the world is changing rapidly every minute and day. What and how fast you can learn new things is more important than what you already know. Blinkit did–when we moved from delivery in days to delivery in minutes.

How do you strike the life-work balance?

I generally take a walk in the park after a tiring day. I play Mobile Legends: Bang Bang or watch some series in my free time.

Sumanth is an SDE 3 at Blinkit. You can follow him on Linkedin.

Say hello to us on Twitter or follow us on LinkedIn.

In Focus: Sumanth Reddy was originally published in Lambda by Blinkit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In today’s world, given the pace at which data operates, we need a tool that can help us to generate reports faster and bring out insights within milliseconds. In order to solve this challenge, several companies have started utilising a few Business Intelligence (BI) tools such as Tableau/Power BI/Superset/Looker/Qlikview, etc. We at Blinkit have also moved away from the traditional way of reporting via spreadsheets to a more scalable and robust tool — Tableau.

Earlier, we had no single source of truth for metrics; it took a significant amount of manual effort to compile data in spreadsheets, and we were frequently limited by our local memory.

Theoretically, Tableau can handle data up to ∞ rows and columns. However, it slowly begins to slow down as it renders calculations, fields, and formulas. At Blinkit, tracking supply and consumer metrics in real-time is the need of the hour. The faster we track, the faster we decide and move forward.

Given below are some hacks that enabled us to achieve a significant improvement in the performance of our dashboards. The effects have been noted across various aspects of our operations, including but not limited to:

• Reduction in the average render/load time by over 50% in the last six months.
• Over a three-fold improvement in throughput in traffic to views in the last three months.
• A 50% reduction in the extract time over the last six months.

Check performance recording

This is the first step in identifying the problem. The performance recording gives information about key events as you interact with a workbook. Further details can be found here.

Generating extract

To speed up extract generation, consider importing only some data from the original data source by using filters or importing a limited sample of data.

Connecting to data sources

Slow connections could be due to network issues or issues with the database server.

Executing Queries

• For live connections, if queries are taking too long, it could be because the underlying data structure isn’t optimised for Tableau. Consult your Database server’s documentation. As an alternative, also consider using extracts as opposed to live connections.
• For extracts, if queries are taking too long, review your filters. If you have a lot of filters, check if a context filter would make more sense. If you have a dashboard that uses filters, consider using action filters, which can help with performance.

Always keep your marks lower

It is not advisable to keep large columns*rows (or marks) in the same view as it would lead to a rendering effect while loading the view.

1. Create hierarchies on dimensions and keep a summary view at default. Use +/- sign when need to expand/collapse, respectively.
2. Don’t force everything into a single view; instead, break them into multiple views and use filters.
3. Keep limited dimensions on details in the marks shelf.
4. Display data using charts/graphs — avoid tabular view. Aggregated charts are far easier to consume and help convey a story.

Push complicated calculations to backend ETLs

We at Blinkit, maintain a layered architecture in our data warehouse. We have scheduled ETLs that power Tableau ingestion tables on an hourly or daily basis. We try to do most of the complex calculations within these ETLs and perform only non-additive/dynamic calculations on Tableau.

1. Wherever possible, aggregate all your rows in the backend itself. Tableau loves feeding aggregated calculations (as shown in Fig. 4). If required, use MIN or MAX over AVG.
2. Avoid using string calculations wherever possible. Datatypes in ascending order of computation time–Boolean<Int<Float<Date<DateTime<String.
3. Avoid using table calculations and LOD (level of details) functions (Fig. 5).

Use data extracts over live connection

Tableau allows two different connections, Live and Extract. While building views, always keep your data source connection as an extract; these are cached. Live connections are immense slow when working with huge data sets.

Incremental refresh over full refresh

Incremental refresh appends the record in a table based on the key chosen (such as at_date_ist in Fig. 8). Whenever the previous records don’t get updated, it's advisable to use an incremental refresh, which will decrease the refresh time of your workbook.

Hide all unused fields

Hide unused columns (measures/dimensions) in order to minimise extract refresh time or custom SQL query time.

Conclusion

By following the best practices discussed above in this blog, you can create a fast and efficient dashboard that provides your users with valuable insights.

Akash is a Senior BI Engineer at Blinkit. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Thanks for reading, and happy dashboarding!

Make your reports faster : Beginner’s guide to Tableau Optimization was originally published in Lambda by Blinkit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jay Dihenkar is a Staff Engineer at Blinkit. He joined us in December 2020 and has helped different teams manage and streamline their build and release processes. He is currently working towards continuously improving the reliability, scalability, observability, developer productivity, and other such aspects of a software system critical for ensuring that the system can meet the needs of its users and stakeholders over time.

Tell us something about yourself and your journey in Blinkit so far.

I started out as an engineer on the Release Engineering team, working on goals of Software Quality/Stability and streamlining release processes (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment or CI/CD). I help make an impact by improving developer productivity while safeguarding the production ecosystem against failures. I later transitioned into the Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team, where we focused on improving the reliability and resilience of our systems. Being a site-reliability engineer requires one to develop a deep understanding of how the various components of a system work together and how to optimize them. Overall my journey in Blinkit is one of continuous learning and improvement.

If you were to describe your experience as a Blinker in one word, what would that be?

Growth. Being here is all about continuous learning in a fast-paced environment.

What does a typical day at work look like for you?

On a typical day, I work on the following domains (though not everything on a single day!):

• debugging complex problems sprung out of production incidents,
• putting automation in places where required,
• setting up monitoring and alerting, as well as responding to alerts,
• release engineering and developer productivity (CI/CD),
• System Infrastructure Cost,
• Working toward implementing Application Reliability Patterns

and so on…

What are the biggest challenges facing quick commerce today?

I believe the “Logistics infrastructure” required to make the quick and efficient delivery of products possible and doing it at scale is one of the more significant problems in q-commerce today. Other problems like Talent Shortage and Value Conciousnesses deserve honourable mentions in the bucket of challenges to be addressed.

What principle do you always adhere to as a techie when solving a problem statement?

Sticking to the basics here — RCA-ing the root cause (5 WHYs), break down the problem, implementation-test-iterate.

Who do you seek inspiration from on an everyday basis?

I seek a lot of motivation by following the work of colleagues and Open Source Community contributors.

What do you love the most about your colleagues?

I admire my colleagues for their technical expertise, problem-solving with attention to detail, positive attitude toward solving problems (and life in general), and complete willingness to learn.

What would be your advice to an engineer hoping to join Blinkit soon?

Be prepared to embark on the journey of fast-paced learning while working with some of the best talents in the industry and making impactful contributions to crucial cutting-edge q-commerce projects at Blinkit.

On the technology side, during your time here, what has been the single most remarkable change you’ve witnessed in the organisation?

A remarkable change was when we transitioned to “quick-commerce,” where we had to reboot our mindset from delivering items “the next day” to delivering in minutes. This also brought various innovations in all aspects of our SDLC, from shipping features to maintaining reliability. We revamped our reliability stack, rewrote much of our code, etc. It has been quite a ride since we entered the instant delivery space.

How do you strike a work-life balance?

I find comfort in meditating and spending time with friends and family while not working.

Jay is a Staff Engineer at Blinkit. You can follow him on Linkedin.

Say hello to us on Twitter or follow us on LinkedIn.

In Focus: Jay Dihenkar was originally published in Lambda by Blinkit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Rukmini Bhattacharya (sometimes mispronounced as Ruk-Money) has been with Zomato since 2018 and with Blinkit since August 2022. She currently works as the City CEO of Bengaluru and heads growth. Here she recollects her journey transition from Zomato and fostering new experiences working with Blinkit. She also sheds light on her learnings working with a tech-first ops company. 😉

August 2018

My last day at BCG, my first at Zomato. I felt an overwhelming sense of excitement, something that hits you only when you take life-changing decisions, like leaving your comfortable, cushy consulting job for a cool startup. Fast forward to…

August 2022

… whew, whatte rollercoaster! The past 4 years had been a clutch of ‘firsts’… first time working on a rocket ship of a business that was food delivery, first time launching multiple businesses like alcohol delivery, first time dealing with the decisions to shut them down. Zomato had been nothing but good to me — offered me great opportunities to work and learn from the best.

Spoilt as I was from the experience, I was looking for my next big project, which turned out to be Blinkit. Specifically, working on growing the business in Bengaluru (infamously known as Bangalore).

At the time, I thought it was to be ‘just another project’, and it took me nearly 2 weeks for me to understand just how wrong I was!

Two weeks in, and I was stumped, yet again. Quick commerce is a beast — with many moving pieces unique to the industry. Two weeks of looking at data, speaking to consumers and to the team just helped me realise, I had a LOOOOT to learn. 🤯

This was my first epiphany:

When in doubt, ASK FOR HELP.

New as I was, I decided to lean into my ignorance. It was my privilege to be co-located with a rockstar ops and tech team, folks who had been building grocery e-commerce for years. It was my luck that they turned out to be a bunch of grounded, friendly, and super helpful people, who made time to share their insights on what made the business tick and even introduced me to Bengaluru.

I spent the first month just speaking to folks in the office — Blinkit folks in Bengaluru and Delhi who told me what to focus on. I also spoke to Zomans in Bengaluru, who shared their unbiased feedback as consumers of quick commerce (not necessarily of Blinkit, though!) Using their inputs, I started working on a localisation and marketing track in the city.

A few months in, I felt more at place in the system. Bengaluru had a superpowered team with which I was working — multiple strong growth-focused leads, some who’d been around since Grofers’ infancy and others who’d been there since Blinkit’s infancy. I’d just returned from a 10-day break, refreshed and re-energised. Obviously, that’s when the other shoe dropped — many of these folks were moving on to bigger and better things (within the company, and without)

I’d be in a position to lead the city from the front. I’d be lying to say that I didn’t want it — I still spent a sleepless night wondering what my next steps would be. That’s when the Bengaluru floods hit us — a week or so of some of the heaviest rains the city had seen, that spared no one.

Here’s the second epiphany I had during this period:

Reliability is key.

We knew that our 10 mins delivery proposition was the best differentiator and predictor of retention we had. The way the entire team pitched in to maintain this proposition was nothing less than amazing. Every day we’d see competitors succumbing to the conditions outside while racing furiously to find solutions to new problems.

Our efforts that day drove the single largest jump in active users and customer love. This basically became the mantra of the team going forward: be the most reliable for your customers every single day. It dictates our actions even today. Jumping forward then to…

Today

Five months in, and it feels like day one! The last, and maybe most critical, epiphany since then:

Build the team.

While this is not a learning that is new to the Blinkit ecosystem — there is not a day that goes by that I don’t reflect on this. Blinkit Bengaluru would be nowhere near its current scale without the ownership and will to succeed that every store manager to growth manager displays. Folks, you know who you are — thank you for everything!

If you’re wondering how this is different from the first epiphany — the first drove my personal learning and growth. This one is about me giving back, being effective, and helping the company do better. In any case, they’re quite cyclical 😄

These are the principles I use every day. Reliability is the team’s top priority — our hygiene and differentiator — we shamelessly press every advantage of our proximity to the tech team and the collegiate feeling of the team in Gurgaon to be able to deliver it. I delegate problems to the team and convey our priorities so they know how to solve them effectively. This helps in finding ever-innovative and deeply detailed solutions to problems while helping each of us grow as problem solvers.

PS: If this gives you the sense that working at Blinkit is one intense workathon, it’s only because I couldn’t find a better way to work in the game nights, chill water cooler conversations, lame joke competitions, and team parties into this blog. Adding one more to the tally of cliches in this write-up, the team that works hard and funs hard wins hard! 🥳

If this strikes a chord with you or piques your curiosity, reach out to me at rukmini@blinkit.com. I’d be happy to answer any questions, or more likely, connect you to folks who can answer them better than me!

My journey at Blinkit: A series of epiphanies was originally published in Lambda by Blinkit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Drishti (she/her/hers) works as a Software Developer Engineer (SDE) at Blinkit. She joined us about six months ago and is now a part of the tech team within the Product Listing and Search pod. She’s always had the inclination to work at scale while making an impact and shipping a customer-first experience. In this post, Drishti recounts her journey with Blinkit and the lessons she learned along the way.

From Customer to Employee

This year on my friend’s birthday, about 3 hours from midnight, I failed to get the ideal bouquet of flowers. Moreover, nobody was offering same-day flower delivery. Thanks to Instagram’s recommendations, I found an advertisement for “Grofers is now Blinkit, delivering in minutes.” I didn’t think flowers belonged on this platform, but there’s no harm in giving it a shot. To my delight, Blinkit offered a fantastic selection of flowers. That day, Blinkit gained another devoted customer. However, I wanted to learn what made the company tick and contribute to this fantastic product, not just be a customer.

Initial days at Blinkit

I always desired to work in a team with a direct line of sight to the end customer during my two years of experience in software; therefore, when given the option to select a vertical, I opted for Consumer. I joined the Product Listing (PLP) team as an SDE-1.

Coming from an MNC, I was astonished by the team structure here. Everyone here comes from a diverse range of disciplines, including design, data, product, and software. Yet, they all shared the same objective: “How can we serve the customer and the business by enhancing discovery?” My teammates’ commitment and ownership inspired me to join the same boat immediately.

Things were going quickly initially, and it was a little daunting. However, my manager Mohit helped me adjust to this new environment. Rather than spoon-feeding me answers, he asked the right questions so I could figure out the best solution to any issue.

First Project

Sancheeta, as well as other team members from the Innovation Hub (IHUB), joined us a few days after I joined the team, and I collaborated with them on one of my first projects, “People also buy” and “Buy more, save more.”

People also buy is a feature that recommends products bought along with the product added to the cart while Buy More Save more is for nudging the customers to buy more quantities of specific products and save extra. Throughout these projects, I gained knowledge about the power of data and how to leverage it to develop a consumer-focused product while attaining business goals. We approached these initiatives with an experimental perspective, so if we fail, we fail soon–as opposed to waiting months for the complete feature to roll out. My manager, Sancheeta, has always held the conviction that if it’s an experiment, we should swiftly deliver a smooth experience to the customers and let the data determine whether the idea is worthy of further iteration. In addition, even though it goes against our instinct as engineers, we should never over-engineer any problem.

After its initial incarnation, “People also buy” was discontinued due to poor results. At that point, among the most crucial teachings I learned as an engineer, was that failures shouldn’t hold us back; instead, we should move on without dwelling on the setbacks. Contrarily, “Buy more, save more” was one of the projects I worked on up until this point, and it produced impressive results by raising the Average Order Value (the amount a customer spends per order).

Looking at the product via a new lens

Around my second month, one of the designers in our team invited us for a UX research interview with a customer. It was the first time I had the chance to hear the other end of the story. I realized that we work on problem statements day in and day out and look at the Blinkit app all the time, so sometimes we take the customer for granted–we feel that consumers will notice and use our feature as we do, but that is not always the case. This interview experience also taught me that I didn’t want to be another engineer who just codes, but I want to be a Product Engineer who can ship an experience to the customer.

Over the following months, I did a couple of cross-team and business-critical projects. One such project was during the festive season. Due to some chaos, it dawned on me that I should start anything with “why” & “what” and then figure out the “how”–instead of directly working on a feature, figure out why I need to work on it.

There have been some ups and downs in these six months, but my learnings were exponential at every step. I came here to make an impact, and I did. My parents, who never trusted online shopping, now use Blinkit for every small and big thing they need. I, along with the PLP team, recently started working in collaboration with the Search team, and I am looking forward to exploring a new set of problem statements. I would like to thank Sancheeta, Mohit, Siddhant, Harsh, Himanshu, and the PLP & IHUB team for giving me such a rich experience.

Drishti is a SDE 1 at Blinkit. You can follow her on Linkedin.

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First 6 Months at Blinkit: Drishti Makhija was originally published in Lambda by Blinkit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What do you say when someone asks you why are you participating in a Hackathon? Saying that you’ve come to a hackathon for (free) food is not the ideal response, and more so to a CEO.

It was a Saturday morning, and I was in the Blinkit headquarters for a hackathon. Our team was working in one of the many glass meeting rooms when a serious-looking man in a black hoodie walked in and introduced himself, saying, “Hi, I’m Deepi”.

Hearing this, one of my teammates said, “I got it”. I, on the other hand, was super confused. I thought, maybe, I heard ‘DP’, which is an acronym for ‘delivery partner’ at Blinkit. I thought it was an internal joke I was unaware of. So, I just smiled and let it pass.

We began talking about the project, and after sharing and receiving a few suggestions, the man in black asked, “Yahan kya karne aaye ho?”, which loosely translates to “what are you doing here?” I mentioned the first (honest) thing that came to my mind, “khaana khaane”, translating to “to have food”. And, we all had a hearty laugh.

Shortly after he left, my teammate, who was smiling earlier, nudged me and said it was the founder you were speaking with. It took me a good ten minutes to let that sink in.

Well, this is one of the many unusual things that happened last weekend at the headquarters. Let’s start from the beginning.

A few weeks back, I was browsing through my LinkedIn feed and came across a post on HackaNoodle — a hackathon powered by Blinkit, with a special focus on women and the trans community. A big fan of hackathons/coding competitions in general, I quickly opened the link to learn more about it and, soon after, registered my name.

Since HackaNoodle was scheduled for November, we all had a few days to form our teams. We made a team of four — Ritika Patel, Palak Bansal, Akshit Sehgal, and me (Nihal Gupta). We started meeting online on Zoom calls to brainstorm what we wanted to build. With Diwali and festive preparations, the days went by quickly. Finally, the much-awaited weekend was here.

The D-day

On November 5th, we all were standing outside a large building in Gurugram with a huge, yellow board on top reading Blinkit. It did not feel like anything big until we stepped in. But oh, how it all changed as soon as I entered the office. I could feel the energy all around me — hundreds of coders, a lot of hustle, and the crew welcoming each of us. However, one thing that (pleasantly) surprised me was the number of women present there. We had 40+ teams, and all of them were led by women.

At the gates, we all got our goodie bags. Like a child, I took my bag aside, found the nearest table, sat there and started unpacking everything one by one. There was a cool black hoodie with my name written on it (which I wore then and there), a laptop pad, a water bottle, stickers (special thanks to the person who included cool stickers in the goodie bag, I love pasting stickers on my laptop), and a few munchies.

Once everyone settled in, the engineering team started briefing us on HackaNoodle — what it was, the theme, the judging criteria, and more. Here, we got to know how Zomato was founded because of a pizza craving Deepinder Goyal had 14 years back (now that I recall this, my answer does not sound dumb — food can take you places!). The story made us realise that we seldom remember how everything starts with a basic idea — be it a product or an organisation.

And we had 24 hours to think of that idea and build it from scratch.

And it began…

The marathon started, and all teams got a room each to eat, sleep, code, and repeat!

We hurried to discuss what we should build. Since the theme was “Build India’s Next Unicorn”, we had many horizons to explore. The challenge was to pick out the best.

In between our brainstorming sessions, the Blinkit team came for check-ins. They mentored and brainstormed with us and gave us real-time suggestions. It felt great to work with such brilliant minds.

Code, code, and more code

Once we finalised the idea, the rest of the day was packed with coding, caffeine, fixing bugs, and, yes… more caffeine.

We continuously tested our code, scratched our heads, and pulled our hair out when the code was not working. But in the end — we made it work!

Food scenes

What kept us working all those long hours without snapping at each other was food. We were in Blinkit’s office, so no doubt the food arrangements had to be grand! Everything we needed — unlimited beverages, noodles, and munchies — was within an arm’s distance. A great variety of dishes were served during every meal.

It felt like I was Charlie, and this was my chocolate factory.

The showtime

The next morning, we had to showcase what we had built. On one side were the top leaders of Zomato and Blinkit, and on the other, a bunch of college students giving their 100% to make India’s next big unicorn.

If you’ve ever been to a hackathon, you know how excruciating the pitching process can be. No matter how great your idea is, it’s not worth it if you can’t sell it. We built a personal workout training application using AI that can track your body while you are performing any exercise or yoga. Our AI would provide feedback, and real-time analytics like posture correction, calories burnt, and activity time. In a nutshell, we were providing people with their own personal trainer, who is available at all times.

Before selling it to others, we sold it to ourselves first. We practised our pitch again and again. And by the time we had the actual presentation, we felt super-prepared.

The results

After what seemed like an eternity, we got the results. Gunjan Patidar (Chief Technology Officer, Zomato) announced that we made it to the top six. We now had to pitch the product to the audience, and they would vote to finalise the winners.

Here are the top three ideas that garnered the most votes (and for all the right reasons) –

• A tool for advanced detection of dyslexic patients, built by Team ‘The Noob Army’
• Generative art videos based on audio clips, created by Team ‘Dining philosophers’
• An e-commerce platform for differently-abled people, developed by Team ‘Agile Coders’

It was exciting to see these ideas unfold and witness the great power of tech — how it can solve so many problems when coupled with the right intent. Although we didn’t win the hackathon, I consider myself extremely fortunate because we got a chance to brainstorm with top leaders and engineers, which was one heck of an experience. We built a useful product, secured a place in the top six, had loads of fun, met enthusiastic coders like us, had delicious food, and learnt a lot.

Can’t thank Zomato and Blinkit enough for organising such a fantastic and memorable event!

This blog is written by Nihal Gupta — a B. Tech. (CSE) student at Maharaja Surajmal Institute of Technology. He came to the Blinkit headquarters to participate in HackaNoodle’22 — a coding competition hosted by Zomato and Blinkit.

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This is a personal blog. Any views or opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not represent the views of the organisation or institutions that the writer of the blog may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity unless explicitly stated.

All team names mentioned above are decided by the participants themselves and do not form any legal entities. Additionally, they do not represent Zomato or its group companies.

How love for food made me participate in HackaNoodle? was originally published in Lambda by Blinkit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ketakii Patni (she/her/hers) works as Senior Executive at Blinkit. She joined us 9 months ago and has played a key role in Consumer Search Content ever since. Ketakii was interested in the marketing and operational aspects of a business, which led her to pursue an MBA in the same field. In this post, Ketakii walks through her journey of improving search on the app.

The Journey & The Transition

The day Grofers rebranded itself as Blinkit was also the day I was interviewed for a role there. When I saw the announcement, I was nervous but also excited to see Blinkit all over the news. It was all I could talk about to my friends. Fortunately, the interview went well, and I joined Blinkit as an intern in the Cataloguing and Merchandising Department. Due to COVID, the first three months of my internship were online. I was worried about adjusting, as it was entirely new to me. But, I had great mentors and peers on my team who welcomed me and made me feel at ease.

I dedicated my first three months on a project that aimed to create and fix nomenclature for products on the app. I worked closely with the Category team and the responsibilities given to me enabled me to gain confidence, and thereon my internship was converted to a full-time job.

I hail from the small city of Jodhpur, so once offices began to open, I relocated to Gurugram. This was my first job, so it was overwhelming for me as well as my family. But coming to the office gave me the opportunity to connect with people and keep learning.

Learning the Process & Improving it

What I really enjoy about Blinkit is that my worklife isn’t just a fixed job description–I am able to achieve way more than that. Blinkit provides ample opportunities to explore within the organisation. In August, I got the chance to join the Consumer Search Content team, which was working on the search journey of a customer. This was an exciting point for me–to do something that is impactworthy. I’ve realised that we cannot put all customers under one bracket. We have to tweak our app according to their needs and wants.

I was given a project to analyse keywords that have less than 10% Conversion (When a customer searches and Adds to Cart, we treat it as a converted search). I noticed that people were searching for “Phool” on the app and realised they weren’t just looking for flowers but also for the eco-friendly brand that sells organic incense sticks, rangoli powder and other similar household items. I suggested that we should consider bringing this brand on board via the Category team. When I saw it on the app a few weeks later, I was thrilled to see the impact of my work being realised.

During my time in the Search Content team, I’ve also taken the initiative to make manual processes more efficient through automation. For example, the task to generate merchant IDs was tedious and loathsome (merchants are virtual entities for physical Darkstores). A template I suggested reduced this lengthy process to just 5 minutes while also allowing us to include many merchants IDs on the system. I’ve identified critical bugs and assisted the development team in fixing them.

I learned additional aspects of the business while creating Product IDs. This process helped me understand the fundamentals of content whilst also figuring out how we can encourage more customers to buy responsibly by providing relevant information on the app.

There are days when things are great, and there are days that are very challenging. You want to be in a workplace that will support you through any obstacle.

Blinkit provided me with such a space when I was facing health issues. I was able to work from home for that time which helped me to cope better.

People and Culture

I like to interact with people, and working here with brilliant minds, talking to them about their consumer experience of using the app, inspires me to improve my work. For me, every interaction is a learning experience. The feedback that I get from my coworkers is something that I really appreciate as open communication is the key to grow and explore.

With a fast-paced business like ours, when you are focused on one problem, another perspective reveals itself. It’s a never-ending process and a constant learning experience.

Along the way, I have learned the importance of technology and how automation can help in making things much more efficient.

Bringing my whole self, and making a meaningful impact is something that I strongly believe in. Being vulnerable allows me to be more resilient and adaptable. Having the courage to take risks and the compassion towards work allowed me to be distinguishable.

Ketakii is a Senior Executive at Blinkit. You can follow her on Linkedin.

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First 9 Months at Blinkit: Ketakii Patni was originally published in Lambda by Blinkit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Avi Singh Raghuwanshi, works as an Associate Product Manager (APM) at Blinkit. He joined us on our instant delivery journey in July 2022. He previously worked on upselling and cross selling through product listing pages during his first two months. His current focus includes improving conversions in Mumbai through targeted assortment and maintaining availability.

Tell us about your background and your journey in Blinkit so far.

Having a dynamic nature, right from my school days, I have always tried to keep myself involved in multiple activities alongside academics. However, I stuck to badminton and represented the Jabalpur district on state level for three consecutive years. This taught me the importance of discipline in life.

Graduating from IIT Kharagpur helped me in shaping myself holistically. The opportunity to work for the student body, as well as, taking up positions of responsibilities on campus helped me develop my managerial skills. At the same time, I always made sure to stay close with technology by doing internships in multiple domains including software development, data analytics, consultancy and product management.

Post graduation, I joined Blinkit as an APM and it proved to be a perfect fit for my dynamic nature. As a part of the product listing page team, I received the opportunity to understand customers and build for them while ensuring business goals were met. Last month I shifted to the assortment side of our business. Since then, it has been a very exciting journey with newer problems and challenges.

Why did you choose to work in tech? What drove you?

I strongly believe that most problems have been solved by miraculous yet simple technologically-driven solutions. Such solutions always go a long way and help us stay lean. The opportunities around me at my college helped me start my journey to solve real world problems with tech solutions and I have found this to be a good fit for myself.

What excites you the most about your field?

Working with cross functional teams, staying close to the end customer and the challenge to find a sweet spot between business and customer demands is what excites me the most about my role as an APM.

While solving a problem, what is the principle you always adhere to?

Ensuring that the problem is worth solving and eradicating biases in my decisions, is one of my biggest learnings so far and this is something which I’ll always stick to while solving problems.

What are your views on the future of technology in your domain?

From the outside, quick commerce looks like a very supply chain centric industry with manual intervention, but very few understand the significance of tech behind the magic we use to deliver to our customers. Each and every aspect of this business has a tech intervention which helps us in optimising time, space, and capital utilisation. The efficiency of each actor in our business including our on-ground picking staff and delivery partners is driven by the technology which enables us to be super quick with our deliveries. There is an ocean of products available in this world today but the space constraints in the quick commerce industry requires a very accurate prediction of demand and assortment at a hyperlocal level. I feel that the first one to crack this with a super accurate model will have an unbeatable advantage in the industry.

What do you love the most about your role at Blinkit?

The dynamic nature of work, plethora of opportunities to solve impactful problems and the smart pool of people around me are my favourite parts of working at Blinkit.

What would you say to a youngster interested in working at Blinkit?

One of the most important things for a youngster is to have enough opportunities to learn quickly at an early stage. Learning is always quick if you have the right problems at your disposal, good guidance and freedom to make decisions without fear. Blinkit provides such an environment to a youngster. If a person is curious about things and is ready to acquire new skills quickly Blinkit would be the right place to work and grow exponentially.

How do you strike the life-work balance?

Efficiency and prioritisation is my mantra for maintaining a good work-life balance and it has been super helpful for me so far.

Avi is an APM at Blinkit. You can follow him on Linkedin.

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In Focus: Avi Singh Raghuwanshi was originally published in Lambda by Blinkit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.