The Quick Commerce Crusader Kaivalya Vohra, CTO and Co-founder, Zepto

During the first wave of the pandemic, Kaivalya Vohra and Aadit Palicha took note of the need for an increase in on-demand grocery delivery, a glaring consumer concern at that time. "We knew that grocery was one of the largest retail categories in India, but offered limited options for home deliveries. Legacy online platforms would take six-seven days to deliver an order, and local vendors lacked the resources to meet high demands. That is the problem we set out to solve by offering consumers the choice of having their groceries delivered right when they needed it. And technology played an instrumental role in helping us solve the existing market problem. Our best-in-class tech stack helps drive efficiency in operations, ultimately making 10-minute deliveries possible," shares Kaivalya Vohra, CTO and Co-founder, Zepto.

One of the biggest factors that helped Zepto bring this solution to life has been its attention to detail. Right from setting up the foundation of the app, geo-fencing and the back-end support tech at the start, to now looking at micro-optimization of the customer journey on the app, the focus has always been to enrich customer experience. "Our tech solutions have led us to predict ETA more accurately, set efficient route navigation systems for our riders on the road and the packers at our stores, stabilise supply chain and fulfilment at mother hubs, track real-time trends and predict demand, improve inventory management and reduce wastage. Overall, improving the TAT (turnaround time) across all functions," adds Vohra. The curiosity to find a solution two years ago became an obsession, and after extensive remodelling led to Zepto.

Categories like dairy, fresh fruits and vegetables that were only available at certain hours of the day are now available throughout the day. Their portfolio is able to cater to all categories of buyers - impulse and full-basket planners. "At Zepto, we take a lot of learnings from data and lean on those learnings to improve customer experience. We've noticed that 10-minute delivery is a strong point of gratification for our customers. And this makes it important for us to double down on this core proposition of ours while making improvements that allow greater delivery accuracy," mentions Vohra. Zepto uses an inventory model of delivery hubs where groceries are delivered from its own micro-warehouses spread across various neighbourhoods. The principle of this model is prioritising short distances over speed. Placing these delivery hubs strategically, while building and maintaining a solid logistics system, has allowed them to make 10-minute online grocery delivery a reality in the country.

Zepto is laser-focused on geographical growth where they wish to expand beyond the majority of pin codes across 10 urban cities in India that they currently service. Today, it delivers over 5000 products and in the coming months, it will drive the applicability of the business model to multiple other innovations like Zepto Cafe.

Tech Stack

Year of inception: 2021

No. of employees: 1200+

External funding received so far: Valuation of $900M