I'm Aadit Palicha, Co-Founder & CEO at Zepto. Ask me anything!
Hi folks,
I'm Aadit, Co-Founder & CEO at Zepto. We're one of India's fastest growing consumer internet companies and are today present across 10+ cities in the country.
I'd love to chat with you folks about my journey in building Zepto, my thoughts on the quick commerce space, organization building, amongst other things.
Ask away!
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Hey @Aadit
I’m @salt
Some questions from my side:
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As companies scale there are many diverging opinions on how things should run. How do you ensure that the best ideas drive the company even though they might be in direct conflict with your point of view?
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What kind of impact have you seen via use of Machine Learning to streamline operational efficiency wrt initial benchmarks?
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What is the key focus area that you are currently working on?
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How do you balance creating shareholder value versus customer value?
Thanks for the thoughtful questions @salt. Answering each of them one by one:
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We are hungry for contrarian points of view at Zepto and we're actively trying to build a culture that encourages/incentivises that. We do that by having open debates with employees on Zepto's direction and rewarding people who push the leadership team hard when they sincerely feel we have made the wrong decision. For example, I've been proven wrong many times in front of large parts of the company during team reviews or all-hands, which I think makes people comfortable that they can call out my BS whenever they notice it :D
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ML at Zepto is a work in progress - everything from our delivery ETAs to fruits and vegetables supply planning have elements of ML integrated into them. There's a lot more scope though and we're currently running experiments across customer support, invoice processing, product recommendations and more!
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Profitability
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Honestly, in my experience 9 out of 10 times, creating sustainable customer value and creating shareholder value are the same thing. Better customer experience = better retention = easier to grow and improve profitability which are inputs into shareholder value (better retention leads to easier monetisation, lower marketing spends, higher throughput + fixed cost leverage etc etc).
Good one @Aadit. I absolutely love your candidness in your answers. Much appreciated! Best of Luck on taking Zepto to a whole new level, we are all rooting for you. 💜
How do you think about hiring within Zepto?
It is now commonly understood that pedigree is not the sole indicator of competence at work. But pedigree is often the easiest factor to account for which often limits hiring pool and creates an inflationary impact via supply side restriction.
How is it that Zepto is balancing the need for finding exceptional talent not only from top schools but from all schools?
Plus, how should candidates think about applying at Zepto (Product/Tech/Data)?
Good question!
We are striving to build a purely meritocratic hiring and rewards framework at Zepto. Pedigree isn't important to us - we index on cultural fit first (attitude/intent) and then subject matter expertise (which can be acquired academically, through experience, or even self-taught).
It's not easy working at Zepto. You are given high-stakes and difficult-to-solve problem statements, and there's no safety net or a slow work pace like an MNC. It's a high-performance culture that requires drive and ambition to succeed in, which candidly isn't everyone's cup of tea.
That being said, if you are:
Highly ambitious and want to work with like-minded and talented people that include some of the brightest minds in Internet India
Looking for a decade's worth of career growth in 2-3 years and love fast-moving environments
Want to work in a highly meritocratic culture where pure performance is the driver of career growth (not pedigree or years of workex)
Excited to learn quickly and work on real problem statements that matter to the business where you can see the impact of your effort clearly
Trying to create wealth through equity in one of the fast-growing companies in India today
Then Zepto is the place for you :D
P.S. - Any of you can apply to Zepto for tech/product/data roles by reaching out to our talent team (nikhil.barge@zeptonow.com for example)
Hello Aadit, a big fan of how quickly you have made Zepto something me and my family can’t live without
Wanted to ask - how do you look at balance for yourself? Do you get time for things apart from work?
And then, how do you look at WLB for employees? (Since their incentives aren’t always as tied to the company’s outcomes)
+1 Honest answers here pliz
Hand on heart, I am so in love with what I do that balance isn't something that I think about too much. I love every single minute of building this company and am pumped to keep doing this for the next few decades. So yes, I do work like crazy and it makes me incredibly happy :)
On our employees, we want to align their incentives with the company's outcomes as much as possible with rapid career growth tied to clear goals and meaningful equity upside. Honestly, Zepto is not the best place to find WLB, but like I mentioned in an earlier post, if you are:
Highly ambitious and want to work with like-minded and talented people that include some of the brightest minds in Internet India
Looking for a decade's worth of career growth in 2-3 years
Want to work in a highly meritocratic culture where pure performance is the driver of career growth (not pedigree or years of workex)
Excited to learn quickly, move fast, and work on real problem statements that matter to the business where you can see the impact of your effort clearly
Trying to create wealth through equity in one of the fast-growing companies in India today
Then Zepto is the place for you :D
Hey Aadit, have heard great things about you from people who evaluated Zepto in the early days
I wanted to ask: what according to you allowed Zepto to crack the q commerce space, while global counterparts have crumbled after a certain stage due to UE. Also, I know Zepto has better unit economics than Swiggy/Zomato. What's the secret sauce? :)
Some criticism here : You need to pull up your socks and work about sending push notifications to customers when you’ve not even started services in their location.
What’s the point of me getting a million notifications when I open app and see “Not in your area?
Fair point, let me look into that
Fair point. Curious to know why you would have the app installed for long if you saw that your area is unserviceable.
For me, I downloaded and uninstalled Flipkart as soon as I saw the Area not serviceable header inside Flipkart Minutes (I use Amazon for the routine D+1 shopping).
What made you stick around? Thanks in advance:)
1/ Have you had challenges with hiring / managing people much older to you?
2/ Ever happened that someone didn’t take you seriously because of an age difference?
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I've been extremely lucky to have a team that cares more about the substance of a leader versus arbitrary markers like age and pedigree (I'm a 12th-pass after all)! Also, especially at a leadership level, I don't treat people like employees, I treat people like partners in building. As a result of those 2 things, I haven't had as much of a challenge working with people much older than I am :)
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Happened with investors during the early days, but as we scaled and built the company, investors started having objective data and numbers to build conviction in KV and I as a founding team
Hey Aadit What advice would you give to my 12 year old niece, who wants to get into Technology?
Come to Bangalore. Lunch on me, bud.
I wish I could say I'm a tech guy, but I'm not - KV (my co-founder) has always been smarter and more technically adept than I am. I'll ask him to ping you ;)
Just wanted to ask, do you ever use competitor apps?
If yes, then what is your guiding mantra on copying a feature which is working for your competitor vs thinking that feature from first principles?
Asking because there has to be an effort vs return on effort trade off between the two that one has to account for.
Bonus: I’m very curious so as to why are you doing an AMA on Grapevine?
Hello @Aadit Thank you for doing this I'm a founder myself, although w a long way to go. I wanted to ask: within grocery, how do you look at the healthy food category? Is it significant for Zepto today? Do you think it can become a category of it's own in 5-10 years?
Hey Aadit,
Can you talk about the idea behind opening zepto cafe? I must say it is the most out of the box for a 10 min grocery place to deliver food. And I must say the quality is quite good!