Zepto co-founder Aadit Palicha: We think of ourselves as…

Zepto co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha said that the three-year old quick commerce platform is ‘a hyperlocal Walmart for a hyperlocal India. Speaking at an event in Delhi recently, Palicha said that Zepto will become bigger than D-Mart in India in terms of sales in the next 18 to 24 months.

“We think of ourselves as a hyperlocal Walmart for a hyperlocal India…that was the big gap that helped us get to the scale and the level of profitability we’ve gotten to.”
“In commerce generally, nobody has been able to build a hyperlocal platform at scale that has quality customer experience…and the reality is that most (of the) commerce in India is done on a hyperlocal basis,” he added.
“The reason why we’re seeing such an incredible product market fit is because we’re the first commerce platform that beats the proximity advantage with the structural advantages of a large-scale retailer in terms of price and sourcing leverage, selection, quality control,” Palicha said.
He further stated that as of FY 2023 the Indian grocery and household essentials segment is $650 billion in size. It is projected to grow to $850 billion by FY29, he added.
“If you want to build a business that’s larger than Amazon or Flipkart…grocery is bigger than all the categories that Amazon and Flipkart serve combined. If you take electronics, apparel, furniture and all the others – and double it, it’s still not as large as grocery and household essentials. So we’re building in the mother of all categories,” the Zepto CEO said.
During the event, Palicha also highlighted that Zepto’s focus will continue to be on the market opportunity from the top 40 cities in India. “In India, every single pincode has a grocery store but just the top 40 cities (will) make up $400 billion of the $850 billion. Just the top 50-70 million households make up for $200 billion,” he said.
“From our perspective, if we execute well, we can realistically take this business from over Rs 10,000 crore in topline today to Rs 2.5 lakh crore in topline over the next five years in the top 40 cities. Our focus is not really on the next 100 cities…,” Palicha said.

Last month, Zepto closed a $665 million funding round at a $3.6 billion valuation. The investment comes less than a year after the Mumbai-based firm pocketed $235 million from investors at a valuation of $1.4 billion, joining the league of unicorn startups.