Zepto, “India’s fastest online grocery delivery app,” has taken the quick commerce market by storm. Zepto offers 10-minute deliveries across grocery and non-grocery categories in high-density cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad. General Catalyst is leading its $340M financing round, with the aim of propelling Zepto’s mission to modernize India’s grocery sector.
In 2020, 19-year-olds Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra were childhood friends preparing to study Computer Science at Stanford when the pandemic altered their trajectory, and they found themselves back in Mumbai. The lockdown unveiled supply chain inefficiencies that disrupted local Kiranas and prolonged online delivery times. Like those embodying an entrepreneurial spirit, Aadit and Kaivalya were motivated to do something about this bottleneck, so they started a WhatsApp group chat to deliver groceries to their neighbors. The next step? Scaling operations. The group chat evolved into an app, and Zepto was born, one of the first consumer internet companies in India to reach $1B of annualized gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2.5 years.
Building a Category-Defining Company
Earlier this year, we joined forces with Venture Highway to support the next generation of ambitious founders in India seizing transformational and category-creating opportunities. Neeraj Arora, co-founder of Venture Highway, has known Aadit and Kaivalya for many years, having personally witnessed their bold vision and unmatched execution with Zepto since their inception in 2020. The young founders possess a rare combination of "out of the box" systems thinking and a mission that has attracted the best industry talent. Their long-term vision to reimagine and build an enduring supply-chain company front-ends as a quick commerce play today.
Quick commerce continues to generate demand in India with a strong consumer pull and a demonstrated need for fast deliveries. Not surprisingly, many players have tried their hand at winning this space, with only a few emerging on top. In this competitive landscape, we believe Zepto stands out with its nuanced understanding of consumer behavior that translates to a unique and unparalleled user experience. In practice, the company’s razor-sharp focus and rigor around disintermediation, and in many cases, ownership of the entire supply chain yields a sustainable and consistent fulfillment experience.
Underpinning every decision at Zepto is a Responsible Innovation ethos. With hyperlocal operations in high-density urban areas, Zepto minimizes fuel usage and traffic congestion by ensuring most deliveries are made with e-bikes and bicycles. Zepto’s job creation spurs India’s economy, providing employment opportunities and job training.
With a prescient view of the future, Responsible Innovation culture, and a DNA of operational excellence, we believe Zepto is building a category-defining company that will structurally change consumers’ buying experience in India.
Delivering Operational Excellence
Zepto has successfully pioneered the quick commerce model and is playing a pivotal role in modernizing grocery, which is not only the largest retail segment in India but also the most difficult to disrupt. Our confidence in Zepto’s execution, which we believe is the only right to win in this space, is deeply rooted in its operational excellence. We have rarely seen a company this young to mirror, and in many cases exceed, global best practices across each and every aspect of an otherwise complex business. Their standard operating procedures (SOPs) and systems are inspired by the best in the world, and each and every SOP is designed to the nth detail and powered by a system to abstract away its complexity into simple task adherence. Zepto’s operational excellence is the cornerstone of its success and is strongly reflected in the capital efficiency that it has delivered. Zepto has reached this scale at a fraction of the capital when compared to its peers or other incumbent e-commerce players in the country.
With an expansive vision, Zepto is at the helm of modernizing India’s grocery sector, all while delighting customers at every step of the journey. We are proud to partner with Aadit, Kaivalya, and the entire Zepto team as they continue to push the envelope of what’s possible and define the future of e-commerce in India.
