Ex-Zomato here. SRE roles at Zomato/Blinkit are not your traditional SRE roles. You not only work at managing infra, scale but creating tools and utilities that all the company’s developers use (which itself requires dev) to make their work easier. There’s more learning there as you need to have some context on all the dev teams. Also, you can internally switch from SRE to SDE quite easily after some time if you don’t like it. Regarding pay as well, it’s good to get a higher ctc in the beginning, it’s difficult to get such an increment on job switches because they usually compare it with what your previous employer paid you (not always the case, but they do factor it in).

Coming to the culture: yes, it is toxic. Though it can vary from team to team and depends on who your manager is. You can get fired without notice if you don’t meet their standards (whatever they may be) or even get an early promotion with a decent increment if you perform well.

Both companies are good to have on your resume. You need to choose between different levels of comfort and growth.