Zepto becomes India's 1st 2023 unicorn

Everything kept aside, it’s genuinely awe-inspiring that they’ve been able to do this in a market with close to zero interest in consumer internet plays, and most models failing

There’s definitely something about the way they executed. And many good things are said within the ecosystem about Aadit as a founder!

How is that doing from inside? Anyone from Zepto or competitive firms?

So as soon as they raised $200M , saare paap dhul gaye. Even Viners are going gaga about them. No doubt India celebrates funding more than unit economics and real metrics. It is a sense of déjà vu with similar reactions to the likes of BYJUs and others in the past.

Love Zepto and the category they created

Bigbasket is still unprofitable after 12 years of operation. And BBNow does something very similar to zepto. Swiggy/Blinkit can also do the same. All 3 are with deep pockets (Tata) or backed by companies that created food delivery category.

I want to root for the small guy but can only see them acquired by one of the 3 - Mostly Bigbasket.

Any insider information on Aadit? He is very low-key unlike other founders in the ecosystem and he genuinely looks like a visionary founder.

Now they will start hiring left and right and then fire after some time

A great day for the Indian startup ecosystem! If we keep the unit economics aside, and zoom out from a perspective of scale, the founders have dared to build a high operation-driven consumer internet business in Indian price-sensitive market, one of the most difficult business to build. Customers are very happy with it, let me know if anyone prefers BigBasket over Zepto. There are many advantages that you have when you're building at such tremendous scale, investors know about it very well. Here are few fronts they could be planning to monetize on, given their scale

1. Ads (obviously)
2. Data to third party services like ONDC enablers of cataloguing
3. Plug their under-utilized logistic arm of fleets to ONDC (which they might have already done probably, and can potentially leverage high margins here, similar to Dunzo)
4. Leveraging their data for inventory intelligence, that's gonna be huge in the future with digitization of local sellers and distributors

Hyper-local businesses are tough, but come with plenty of overlooked advantages, when we're evaluating it as a customer. Highly optimistic about the Indian startup ecosystem and the unimaginable strategy pull-offs by hardcore execution of Indian founders! 🇮🇳

We're building a lot of sustainable profitable businesses anyway and that's not talked about, let's not discourage the founders going down the difficult paths of risky and seemingly difficult large scale businesses. Everyone said we don't need 10 min delivery of groceries, we can wait. Now, after Zepto, tell me if you'd wait for an hour to get your fruits and munchies delivered?

I smell a scam. This whole quick commerce thing is a money sink and the whole zepto founders just being figureheads with it being run by the family. Personally I see them blowing up worse than Dunzo down 2 years the line.

Surprising! Im curious to know how did they manage to raise this funding round in this market? Is it because dunzo is dying and they might be better that market share or they genuinely have nailed unit economies of this business.