These two 19-year-olds scaled Zepto into a $900 million company in nine months

• Zepto is now valued at a whopping $900 million, after raising $200 million.
• The funding round was led by Y Combinator Continuity fund and Kaiser Permanente.
• The company has already hired 1000 employees so far and plans to hire 1000 more this year

Quick commerce startup Zepto — founded by two 19-year-old Stanford dropouts nine months ago — is now valued at a whopping $900 million. The company, on Monday night, announced that it has raised $200 million.

The funding round was led by Y Combinator Continuity fund and Kaiser Permanente. All key existing investors, including Nexus Venture Partners, Glade Brook Capital and Lachy Groom have also participated in Zepto’s latest Series D round.

The company has raised close to $350 million to date and was valued at $560 million in April December 2021.
Source: Zepto

Zepto’s chief executive officer (CEO) and cofounder Aadit Palicha, highlighted that the company has reported 800% increase in its revenue on a quarterly basis. Secondly, the cash burn of the company has come down by a fifth on a pre-order basis. The company also claims to maintain an Net Promoter Score (NPS) — a metric that companies use to measure customer loyalty — at 88-points, he noted.

“This unbelievable execution over the past few months has made it clear to investors that Zepto will be one of the winners in Indian Q-Commerce,” he emphasised.

The company is also piloting several services to deliver coffee, tea and items from local cafes — termed as ‘Zepto Cafe’ — in under 10 minutes across selected areas in Mumbai. The company plans to scale this service, which is not a food delivery vertical as per Zepto, across India if the pilot is successful.

Zepto was founded by Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra in April 2021, and it currently delivers 3,500 products across 11 cities in 10 minutes flat. These services are available in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ghaziabad and other cities. Zepto plans to start its operations in another dozen cities in the near future.

“We not only want to just expand across the country but we also want to double down on the team we have built because frankly creating a $900 million company in nine month is an insane achievement. Frankly, the team has had everything to do with that,” Palicha told Business Insider.

He noted that the company has already hired 1000 people across functions over the last few months and plans to hire another 1000 in the next one year. The first round of hiring was focused on all verticals — engineering, analytics, operations, marketing, finance, and human resources (HR). The second round would be focused on tech and product.

The competition in the quick commerce segment has increased significantly even since the second half of 2021. Zepto competes with Reliance-backed Duzno, Swiggy Instamart, Zomato-backed Blinkit (Grofers) and now Tata-backed BigBazaar.

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