Zepto has secured $350 million in new funding, its third round of financing in six months, as the Indian quick-commerce startup strengthens its position against its competitors ahead of a planned IPO next year.
Indian family offices, wealthy individuals and asset manager Motilal Oswal invested in the round, which maintains Zepto’s $5 billion valuation. Motilal co-founder Raamdeo Agarwal, family offices of Mankind Pharma, RP-Sanjiv Goenka, Cello, Haldiram, Sekhsaria and Kalyan as well as celebrities Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar are among the backers in the new investment, which is the largest fully-domestic primary round in India.
The funding push comes as Zepto rushes to add Indian investors to its cap table, with foreign ownership currently exceeding two-thirds. TechCrunch first reported about the new round’s deliberation last month. The Mumbai-headquartered startup has now raised over $1.35 billion since June.
Quick-commerce sales — delivering grocery and other items to customers’ doorsteps in 10 minutes — in India are set to surpass $6 billion this year. Morgan Stanley projects the market to be worth $42 billion by 2030, representing 18.4% of total e-commerce and 2.5% of retail sales. These strong growth prospects have forced established players including Flipkart, Myntra and Nykaa to cut delivery times as they lose business to specialized delivery apps.
Even though quick commerce hasn’t made inroads in most pockets of the world, the model seems to be working especially well in India, where unorganized retail stores are everpresent.
Quick-commerce platforms are creating a “parallel commerce for convenience-seeking customers” in India, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note this month.
Zepto and its rivals — Zomato-owned Blinkit, Swiggy-owned Instamart, and Tata-owned Bigbasket — currently operate at lower margins than traditional retail, and Morgan Stanley expects market leaders to reach contribution margins of 7%-8% and adjusted EBITDA margins of more than 5% by 2030. (Zepto is currently spending about $35 million a month, according to many people familiar with the figure.)
Zepto, which serves a total of more than 7 million orders in over 17 cities daily, is on track to record annualized sales of $2 billion, according to an investor presentation reviewed by TechCrunch. It projects 150% growth over the next 12 months, CEO Aadit Palicha told investors in August. The startup plans to go public in India next year.
However, the fast growth of quick-commerce has had a devastating effect on mom-and-pop shops that dot thousands of Indian cities, towns and villages.
Around 200,000 neighborhood stores have closed in the past year, with 90,000 stores shutting down in major cities where quick commerce is more prevalent, according to the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation.
The federation warns that without regulatory intervention, more neighborhood stores face closure as quick-commerce platforms prioritize growth over sustainable practices.
Zepto said it has created work opportunity for hundreds of thousands of gig workers. “From day one, our vision has been to play a small role in nation-building, create lakhs of jobs, and offer better services to Indian consumers,” said Palicha in a statement.
Regulatory challenges are looming. Unless an e-commerce firm is majority-owned by an Indian company or person, current rules prevent it from operating on an inventory model. Quick-commerce firms are currently not compliant with these rules.
