Sharing his insights on the rapid success of the startup, now valued over $5 billion, was Aadit Palicha, co-founder of Zepto, who shared insights on Monday at NDTV World Summit 2024: The India Century.
Looking back, he says the reason for dropping out of college sounds like a cliché Silicon Valley story. But before leaping, Aadit Palicha and his co-founder Kaivalya Vohra had calculated their options for a year.
As kids, we were very passionate about coding and building small products for fun. Caught in Mumbai by the COVID-19 pandemic, we were supposed to go to California for studies but saw little value in online education. So, instead of wasting a year, we decided to experiment, said Palicha.
We were just sitting in Andheri and thought, 'Let's take a year and build something interesting', Palicha explained.
Grocery delivery was still in its early stage back then, with most offline shops shut by that time. They started communicating with the customers only through WhatsApp, and gradually established the first version of Zepto. It took one year for the WhatsApp group to go live, which in itself is a turning point.
Palicha recalls, "Vohra's mother burst into tears, feeling I had brainwashed her son." But that was not too long after they were making a few million dollars in revenue and growing rapidly.
Regarding why they went with a ten-minute delivery model, Palicha said, "Zepto is a customer-centric company. Most groceries in India are bought hyper-locally, with people ordering multiple times a day.".
From Bandra, they launched within a few months and realized that ten-minute deliveries were not only possible but in high demand. "Customer retention and love were so high. People were excited," he added.
More than that, he also addressed the gig workers who are behind the success of the company's businesses. "In the pursuit of creating huge value for its customers, Zepto believes that adding value to delivery partners' lives is no less important. Until date, Zepto has onboarded 50,000 delivery partners in the last 36 months, continuously and profitably so," he explained.
Zepto provides delivery partners with many benefits including consultations with a doctor, repairing their vehicles, providing insurance, and many facilities to make work-life experience even better. "Our philosophy is to unlock productivity, and we always welcome any type of feedback and suggestions," he added.
Palicha spoke about AI and technology, saying that Zepto was committed to using data systems to deepen the customer experience. "We focus on search history to offer personalized products and AI can respond in two seconds rather than in minutes to clarify a doubt," he mentioned, then emphasized that the company never made a compromise for excellence from day one.
He also added that in the future they expect to extend Zepto to all the cities they haven't reached yet.
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