Zepto | Success Story of India’s latest Thriving Startup

Zepto is a Mumbai-based company that offers delivery of groceries in just 10 minutes. The founders of the company are Aadit Palchia and Kaivalya Vohra. Zepto is known for delivering its customer’s grocery orders in just 10 minutes. It is considered one of the fastest-growing companies in the faster-delivery business.

About The Founders

The founders of Zepto are Aadit Palchia and Kaivalya Vohra; they are 19-year-old childhood best friends. Aadit Palchia and Kaivalya Vohra dropped out of the prestigious Computer Science program of Stanford University to return to India and start their own business. They started Zepto in September 2021, and it began operations in April 2022.

Aadit Palchia

He is the CEO and the co-founder of Zepto and KiranaKart. He founded his first startup at 17, known as GoPool but left it in 2020. Aadit completed his IB diploma from GEMS Education in Mathematics and Computer Science and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. 

Kaivalya Vohra

Kaivalya Vohra is the co-founder and CTO of Zepto and KiranaKart. He has also graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science. Both Aadit and Kaivalya went to Y Combinator grade and completed it.

Beginning of Zepto

The meaning of the name Zepto comes from a factor of 10⁻²¹, i.e., 0.000000000000000000001, named after a tiny unit of time, offers delivery services in 10 minutes.

The idea of Zepto came into its founder’s minds during the time of the pandemic. There was a vast demand for basic things like groceries that took a couple of days to arrive. Vohra and Palchia, who lived alone during the pandemic, found it a huge problem and decided to start a business that would solve this.

Their first startup KiranaKart made it easier to shop for groceries, while Zepto shortened the delivery time.

Business Model

Zepto is able to complete its target of 10 minutes delivery because of its dark stores and mini-warehouses system. The company works around a customer-centric and instant service model.

A dark store is a small neighborhood storehouse that is not available for visitation but only for online shopping. Zepto tries to keep up with all the possible geographical conditions like traffic dynamics, topography, road patterns, weather conditions, last-mile operational improvement, and real estate prices. All this helps delivery partners to complete the delivery with ease.

Aadit Palchia says that it takes approximately 8 minutes and 47 seconds to ensure the perfect delivery of goods to a customer.

Zepto’s Growth

In the past few months, Zepto has seen a crazy amount of growth in the country’s major cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi-NCR, with Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, and Kolkata to follow in the coming months. The company has its main operation in Mumbai while having its technical office in Bengaluru.

As a five-month-old startup, Zepto made a valuation of $570 million after raising $100 million in a Series C round headed by Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund. Recently, the company has acquired expertise from seniors like Uber, Flipkart, Dream11, Amazon, and Pharmeasy.

As of May 2022, Zepto’s revenue growth was reported to be between $200-400 million. This value will reach $1 billion by March of next year, and the company has claimed to have grown by 800% in the last few months. 

Also Read: Cadbury | Success Story of World’s Leading Chocolate Brand