10-minute grocery delivery delivery firm, Zepto, lands a double valuation of going from $ 225 million two months back to $ 570 million in a Series C funding round of $ 100 million led by Y Combinator while expanding its footprint to newer cities.

Based in Mumbai, the startup was founded by two 19-year old entrepreneurs who had left Stanford last year, and began talking about the business only towards the end of the same year. By then Zepto had already attracted attention from the local startup community while people engaged in voicing opinions about the platform. Before starting the grocery business, the two had been busy with numerous projects, one being a ride hailing commute app for school children. They started their grocery business when the pandemic hit making it difficult to purchase groceries and it was upon this realization, the idea sprung in their minds.

As the startup’s name is derived from a mathematical term, it had ventured into the 10-minute and this service has become ever popular among consumers with Swiggy and Blinkit also entering the space. Yet neither had stepped in before Zepto did.

With the current funds, Zepto plans to take its service to towns and cities beyond metros.

The platform currently harbors 400 members and is further looking out to add over 800 across 2022-23 from various verticals.

In the highly competitive quick commerce industry landscape in India, Zepto’s execution model is said to be unique as it has spiked investor’s interest in the company and is said to be looking at its execution in the long-term in a more sustainable manner. However, this hyper competitive market also seems to infuse concerns of freelance workers experiencing more stress. Whereas, Zepto assures that its rider workforce retention rate is 60 percent as they are not expected to ride long distances and are provided with more convenient options when they are placed with a specific dark store by enabling them to serve areas only within proximity.

Delivering groceries in 10 minutes has been a game changing experience for the customers reflecting Zepto’s strong product market fit metrics. Today it cherishes a monthly buyer retention of 65 percent with an 88 point Net-Promoter Score (NPS) and the company takes this data as a positive boost to expand its 10-minute model across the country.

At present it has about a 100 dark stores handling large volumes and is said to be on par with its equal counterparts, which can be clearly observed in its customer retention rates over the past five months since its inception. Additionally, it has been witnessing a monthly 200 percent growth and most notable is that the time it had scaled is the exact duration taken by food delivery majors such as Swiggy and Zomato.

It has been noted that the company’s leadership team comprises executives from Flipkart, Uber, Dream11, Pharmeasy, PepperFry, and Amazon.

In five months it has established 100 micro warehouses each capacitating over 2,500 orders per day and is in hopes of establishing the same at an even faster rate in the road ahead.

“Since Aadit and Kaivalya went through Y Combinator, we have observed that they're exceptional founders who bring relentless focus and ‘Doordash-like’ execution to the quick commerce model. They originally launched with a different model, swiftly pivoted to quick commerce in August 2021 and are now adding 1,00,000 new customers every week, 60 percent of them women. Their attention to detail on the logistics experience is unparalleled and this has enabled them to scale to most major metros in just five months. Simply put, we're confident Zepto will win in this space over the long-term”, says Anu Hariharan from Y Combinator.