About Zepto
Zepto is an online fruits delivery app started by 2 Stanford dropouts students, in the year April 2021. The co-founders of the company are Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra. Aadit is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company and Kaivalya is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the company. The company has its headquarters registered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
The main aim of the company is to provide fruits within a little time. The company was founded in June 2020 by the name of KiranaKart but the co-founders were forced to close the company in March 2021, and then Zepto was found. The competitions of Zepto are Blinkit, Big Basket, Swiggy, etc.
The company started its operations with Mumbai, but it is currently in 7 cities including Mumbai and those cities are Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, Delhi, Noida, and Pune and will be coming in another city of India which is Kolkata. The delivery time it claims for delivery during the working hours is of 7 Am to 1 Am. The fastest delivery which was done was in 8 min and 45 seconds.
Zepto Funding
The company in its funding round has raised about 60 million dollars in the month of November from US-based Glade Brook Capital which is a US-based investment fund, the money raised was at a post-money valuation of 225 million dollars. There were other notable investors in this funding round which were Nexus Venture Partners, which is a Venture Capital Partners and Silicon Valley’s Y Coimbatore, and Whatsapp’s former Chief Business Officer Neeraj Arora who is a prominent angel investor.
After the 1st funding round company in a few months, the company grew its customer base by over 200% a month just before the month of November. The company in the month of December again raised money, and this time the money raised was 100 million dollars and the valuation for raising this fund was 570 million dollars, which got enough more valuation in terms of previous raise, this time the raise was more than the double.
Zepto Offer Quick Time Delivery
The supply chain it follows is of Quick commerce or Q- commerce, where it promises of the ordering of its promise of deliveries and delivery in 10-30 minutes of ordering is the unique selling proposition.
The major difference that the app offers is the quick delivery time, as the company offers to deliver the orders in 10 minutes of the ordering which is faster than its competitors. The company had earlier got an offer from Swiggy and Zomato to be acquired but the company rejected the offer and kept working on the start up. The quality of food delivered by Zepto is good and the time of distributing that food is very fast as compared to its rivals. Another problem which could be said is that of paying delivery guys, as the drivers have to drive very much if the selling time remains the same.
Working Model
Another problem that can be said is that of the working model on which Zepto works. It works on the model of Dark Store and Cold Rooms Model, in which a dark store is a small neighborhood warehouse where consumers cannot enter the store directly or see the quality of products, as they will get to know the products at the time of delivery only.
Though the Dark Store model is not new to this market or this nation this model is not completely explored as of now. Another thing is that these dark stores and cold rooms are customs designed to specifically meet the requirements which allow ease of navigation and allows the packers to move quickly in the place as soon as possible to put the items in the order and deliver them.
The problem here becomes the cost of modifying the cold room for separate cities according to the storage of the product and its requirements, but the thing is if a product gets damaged, there can be chances of other products in the storage might also get destroyed.
