Business.
Zepto, a 10-minute grocery delivery app, has raised $200 million in its Series D round of funding at a valuation of $900 million, signifying investor confidence amid a slowdown in startup funding, and giving it ammunition to compete against larger rivals such as Swiggy, Dunzo, and BigBasket.
The round was led by Y Combinator Continuity along with Kaiser Permanente. Existing investors including Nexus Venture Partners, Glade Brook Capital, and Lachy Groom, also increased their investments. Last December, the startup had raised $100 million led by YC Continuity for a valuation of $570 million.
he startup was in fact looking to raise at a $1 billion valuation, which would have given it the unicorn status, but this didn’t come through.
Reacting to this, Aadit Palicha, co-founder & CEO of Zepto, said, “Yes, there was a buzz, about a billion dollars. The reality is that we’ve created a $900 million company in nine months, which is an incredibly successful outcome.
“On an absolute basis, making a $900 million company in nine months is a pretty exciting sort of achievement. While some can downplay it because it’s some sort of artificial milestone, most people who know the internal process understand it.”
“We closed this round in about 5-6 weeks. We obviously did this round post the war and the whole downturn in private markets. But what we’ve noticed is that the investors have raised their bar and have become selective now and the quality of the companies that they invest in is now very high.”
Founded by two 19-year-old Stanford University dropouts – Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra – Zepto offers quick grocery delivery to customers through micro-warehouses. Palicha and Vohra, brought up in Dubai, are from families that had a background in business and dabbled with ventures early on. While in school they started up their first venture GoPool, a ride pooling app that was acquired by a Dubai-based firm.
