Zepto (company)

Zepto is an Indian quick-commerce company headquartered in Bengaluru. It was founded in July 2021 by Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra. As of August 2024, the company is valued at over $5 billion and operates over 250 dark-stores across ten metropolitan areas in India.
Zepto's competitors in India's grocery delivery space include Amazon's India unit, Flipkart, Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, and BigBasket.
Aadit Palicha started KiranaKart with Kaivalya Vohra in 2020 when they were 17 years old. Palicha and Vohra skipped college to start Zepto, instead raising capital from Contrary, which offered to invest if they dropped out of Stanford University.
Palicha and Vohra originally branded the company as KiranaKart and focused on facilitating grocery delivery by partnering with local kirana stores, but that approach did not gain traction. They also participated in Y Combinator's accelerator program while building out the first version of the platform.
In 2021, the company rebranded to Zepto and verticalized the operation, building a network of dark stores to fulfill orders. In April 2022, Zepto launched Cafe, a division focused on delivery of coffee and ready-to-eat food. In February 2023, the company launched Bloom, a platform for farmers to manage food production and distribute goods from villages to cities.
Zepto and other major delivery platforms including Zomato, Blinkit, and Swiggy employ over 3 million gig workers. The company began a paid membership program in February 2024, which has over 4 million subscribers as of April 2024.
In 2024, Zepto moved its headquarters from Mumbai to Bengaluru.
In January 2021, KiranaKart (now Zepto) raised $730,000 in a pre-seed round led by Global Founders Capital, Contrary Capital, 2 AM Ventures, and angel investors.
In October 2021, it raised $60 million from Nexus, Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, as well as angel investors Lachy Groom, Neeraj Arora and Manik Gupta at $225 million valuation.
In December 2021, the company raised $100 million Series C round led by Y Combinator's Continuity Fund at a valuation of $570 million.
In May 2022, Zepto raised $200 million at $900 million valuation as a part of its Series D round which was again led by Y Combinator's Continuity Fund. Investors including Nexus Venture Partners, Glade Brook Capital and Contrary Capital participated in the new round.
In August 2023, Zepto raised $200 million as part of its Series E round at a $1.4 billion valuation, becoming a unicorn. It raised funds from U.S-based investment firms StepStone Group and Goodwater Capital. Existing backers including Nexus Venture Partners and Glade Brook Capital also participated in the deal.
In June 2024, Zepto raised $665 million funding at $3.6 billion valuation as part of its Series F round and $340 million funding at a $5 billion valuation two months later, raising over $1 billion in 2024 and more than $1.5 billion since its inception.
In April 2022, Anand Mahindra commented that q-commerce delivery is "inhuman" to the delivery workers that Zepto and peers contract to fulfill orders. Aadit Palicha, the co-founder of the company responded that only speeds of less than 15 km/h are necessary to make deliveries.
In December 2024, Zepto faced criticism for employing dark patterns in its app, including differential pricing and hidden charges on the final bill.