Zepto is an Indian company founded by Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra. Just like every student who graduated in 2020, they had looked forward to their graduation, but COVID-19 had other plans. Since Stanford had gone completely online, the two of them stayed in their respective homes in India and had a significant amount of time to just think. Grocery shopping, as I’m sure populations across the globe would agree, had become more difficult with the onset of rules that came with the pandemic. A lot of India’s grocery-store apps were lacking, providing neither speedy delivery or accurate deliveries, and the two realized that they could create something better. Zepto is an app that promises groceries that are delivered in 10 minutes or less. According to Forbes, “Today, their company, Zepto, which is just under two years old, delivers hundreds of thousands of orders per day; generates several hundred million dollars in annual revenue; and has raised over $360 million in funding from investors like YC Continuity, Contrary Capital, Glade Brook Capital Partners, and Lachy Groom, most recently a Series D that values the company at over $900 million.”
India is obviously a very dense and chaotic place which makes time extremely variable. The edge over other companies comes from the condensed time within the dark store, from packing to checkout. In the Forbes article they were able to interview Aadit who said, “On the software side, we built things like a navigation system for packers to find the most ideal path inside the dark store; a scanning system to give packers the ability to scan and automatically verify items; a color-coded system on riders’ devices so that they can match their orders faster during the handshake process between packer and rider instead of looking at an order ID.On the operational side, it comes down to the way we designed racks, chillers, freezers, and handover stations. Even the way we designed the SKU maps takes into account having the fastest-moving products near the exit. Everything is built for maximum speed efficiency.”
Similar to what we have discussed in class, the idea of a quick online grocery-shopping app already existed. The two simply took the structure that already existed and improved upon it. They took the time that many deemed unfortunate and transformed prior prototypes into something extremely profitable. Zepto will most likely be making billions of dollars in revenue within the next 1-5 years, according to Aadit. They started small, and now they are scaling their business 3-5x. It really makes one think and look around for the next thing that might need improved upon. This was something that was made necessary by the pandemic, and they filled that need. It’s as simple as that.
Zepto website: https://www.zeptonow.com/