Customers can place an order from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. and have their groceries delivered in under 10 minutes.
Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, Stanford dropouts, developed Zepto, which has received $60 million in seed funding in India’s thriving start-up ecosystem. According to the firm, Y Combinator, Glade Brook Capital, and angel investors Lachy Groom and Neeraj Arora are among the company’s backers.
According to the founders in Mumbai, India, each order has its own custom Expected Time of Arrival (ETA), which can be as short as six to seven minutes depending on the location and availability of resources. According to the company’s owners, many of their orders arrive on time. What do you do if an order does not arrive on time? To make things right, they say, “we offer discounts or other incentives to our customers.” Currently, all app deliveries are free.
Customers can purchase a variety of products from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m., including fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, chocolate, soft drinks, and medications.
Mr. Palicha and Mr. Vohra have been friends since childhood and have spent many hours playing table tennis together. Finally, they were accepted into Stanford University’s prestigious computer science engineering programme. “We never thought we’d get to this point,” they say.
After about three months of trial and error, the founders had refined the model to its current form. While experimenting with home grocery delivery, they had an epiphany. “We had hoped for a 45-minute delivery time, but it took much longer.” Following that, we sat down with our clients and observed their reactions. We set out to figure out how to make this happen for all of our customers after noticing that customers who received their deliveries within a 15-minute window were happier and spent more money on the platform.” According to Mr. Palicha,
According to Mr. Vohra, the idea came to them after a series of brainstorming sessions. He sees grocery delivery as a promising new frontier in India. “This model appears to be working pretty well around the world,” he continues. He claims that the fact that they only asked investors to order something once was enough to convince everyone that this was the “next big thing.” They claim to do the same when looking for new employees.
Grofers, Dunzo, Swiggy, and other start-ups are already major players in India’s grocery delivery market, but the duo is confident in their product and claims that no one else is a competitor. We are currently developing an experience and technological infrastructure that we believe is superior to anything else available, and this is what is driving our growth and why our customers love us,” Mr Palicha says. “That’s why our customers love us so much.” There is no competition for them, and they set their own standards.