After operating in stealth mode for 6 months, Zepto publicly announced today (November 1) an early-stage round of $60 million to expand 10-Minute Grocery Delivery nationwide.
The 19-year-old founders, Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, left behind computer science degrees at Stanford University to build Zepto, with backing from institutional investors like Glade Brook Capital, Nexus, and Y Combinator, and individual investors including Lachy Groom, Neeraj Arora, Manik Gupta and more.
With its optimized network of ‘cloud stores’ or micro-warehouses, Zepto is able to consistently deliver in 10 minutes through a combination of technical and operational excellence. Why 10 minutes? Founder & CTO, Kaivalya Vohra, answers, “Simply put, customers, love a rapid delivery experience. The data speaks for itself – once we started delivering in 10 minutes, our NPS shot up and has constantly remained at around 85 with a 50%+ Week-on-Week user retention rate, which shows the incredibly strong customer love for our product.”
Zepto is expanding quickly across Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR and will be launching in key areas across Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata in the next 30 days. With its tech office in Bengaluru and Operations headquarters in Mumbai, Zepto has also built out a strong team to manage their pace of growth. Its management includes senior leaders from some of the nation’s largest startups including Flipkart, Uber, Dream11, Pharmeasy, and Pepperfry to name a few, it said in a press release.
Aadit Palicha, Founder & CEO, says, “Q-Commerce in India is an opportunity of epic proportions and strong unit economics. We’ve been ignoring the noise and executing heads-down for a long time to perfect this model, and our efforts are paying off. Today, we’re consistently growing 200 percent every single month with an unstoppable team, robust product infrastructure, and deep access to institutional capital.”
Board members and investors are bullish on the Company’s trajectory. “Quick e-commerce is poised to transform how many shop around the world. We look forward to partnering as Zepto brings a magical consumer experience across India”, said Paul Hudson, CIO at Glade Brook Capital.
Suvir Sujan, Managing Director at Nexus Venture Partners, added, “The Zepto team is disrupting e-commerce in India.”
Zepto delivers groceries in 10 minutes through a network of highly optimized ‘cloud stores’.
Zepto is hiring rapidly across Engineering, Operations, Marketing, and Finance.