The instant grocery delivery startup Zepto has raised $200 million at a valuation of $1.4 billion at a time when most other firms in the category have either died or are struggling and has become the first Indian startup to attain the unicorn status this year.
StepStone Group, an influential LP in many venture funds, led Zepto’s Series E funding in what is the U.S. firm’s first direct investment in India. Goodwater Capital and existing backers, including Nexus Venture Partners, Glade Brook Capital and Lachy Groom also participated in the round.
Zepto was last valued at $900 million in a funding round it unveiled in May last year. The startup, which has raised about $560 million to date, has no secondary transaction in the new round, Zepto co-founder and chief executive Aadit Palicha said in an interview.
The funding comes at a time when the vast majority of instant delivery startups globally – Gopuff, Jokr, Getir, Gorillas, Instacart and others that collectively raised over $10 billion – have significantly curtailed their operations, have seen their private valuations plummet, or shut down entirely.
Closer to home, BlinkIt got sold for less money than it raised after nearly a decade of operations. Reliance Retail-backed Dunzo has deferred payments to employees and laid off employees after aggressively spending over $150 million to expand dark stores, a gamble that appears to not have worked at all.
So what has worked for Zepto?
“Most people don’t realize this, but businesses that are driven by supply chain and are operationally intense are fundamentally about execution,” Palicha told TC. “The high-level elements that people keep throwing – existence of deep-pocketed competitors, who all is on the cap table etc – don’t matter. What matters is the basis point by basis point execution and discipline with which you are governing every inch of your supply chain.”
Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra co-founded Zepto when they were 19. The duo — who had previously worked on a number of projects, including a ride-hailing commute app for school kids, and dropped out of Stanford two years ago — took Zepto out of stealth mode in November 2021.
The startup, which sells and delivers everything from grocery items to electronic gadgets, processes over 300,000 orders a day in seven Indian cities. Zepto, like many other firms operating in the category, relies on hundreds of so-called dark stores that are dot popular neighbourhoods in cities. The vast majority of these stores are fully EBIDTA positive, Palicha said.
In fact, Zepto has reduced its “burn” significantly and is aiming to be IPO-ready with a company-wide EBIDTA positive metric in 12 to 15 months, he said. The startup — whose annualized revenue run rate today exceeds $700 million, according to Palicha — has grown its sales by 300% year-on-year and is targetting $1 billion in annualized sales within the next few quarters, he said.
“Even with this capital, we want to maintain our discipline, avoid complacency, and push hard to hit EBITDA positivity,” said Kaivalya Vohra, Zepto co-founder and CTO, said in a statement. “In that journey, the biggest drivers of P&L improvement for us are based on technology and product. We are building one of the best supply chain product stacks in the country today and we are investing heavily in customer-facing product as well. This technical excellence is in our DNA, and I’m excited about the next phase of building.”
The funding makes Zepto the first unicorn from India this year amid a protracted slowdown in the economy that has significantly hurt the appetite of investors.
More to follow.
