The confinement prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic was, for many people, a dark moment. But in the case of Indian Aadit Palicha, it was the ‘eureka’ moment that currently allows him to earn $900 million thanks to his home delivery company.
Deep within himself, Palicha has found a solution to a problem – The Indian Entrepreneur, who is only 20 years old, was surprised at the speed with which he built a business that has grown exponentially since its inception – We are talking about Zepto, a company dedicated to home delivery of all types of groceries with a promise of delivery in less From 10 minutes, and is currently considered one of the fastest growing startups in India, according to the British “BBC”.
“It’s been quite a crazy ride. We launched Zepto in July 2021 and since then, in about 16-17 months, we’ve gone from nothing to about 200 million in annual sales. Hopefully this growth trajectory will result in $1 billion in annual sales in the third quarter.” Or the fourth of 2023, Balicha said, during an interview with British radio show Business Daily.
What was the “eureka” moment? During the pandemic, Palicha and the other co-founder lived in Mumbai and were looking for a business idea. “During the first lockdown, getting food was a complete nightmare. Most of the offline options were closed and the online options took at most 6-7 days due to chaos,” explained the entrepreneur.
“It was a huge effort for us. When we talked to our neighbours, many of whom are much older than us, we saw that it was a big problem for them. So the idea came: why don’t we distribute food to them? on food.”
“We deliver purchases within 10 minutes thanks to a network of convenience stores or ‘mock shops’ that we partner with across the country,” Palicha confirms.
When the user places an order in the application, he finds a well-organized list of more than 5,000 products, but the system connects the buyer to the ghost mini-warehouse closest to the place where the product will be delivered – these are warehouses dedicated exclusively to this function, organized in order to optimize the whole process of selecting Products are located and adapted so that they can be made in less than 90 seconds.
“Thus, we are able to deliver quickly thanks to the short distances between stores and customers (which do not exceed 1.7 kilometers) and not the high speeds of the delivery drivers,” which guarantees the businessman – the decision to set the delivery time in 10 minutes was not the result of chance, but of tests carried out They ran it with different capabilities which showed that they can get more performance with this option.
Zepto currently operates in every major city in India and has over a thousand people working in its offices, as well as tens of thousands of couriers. Despite the great achievement achieved in a short time, Palecha is wary when he announces that his undertaking is a success.
“We don’t feel like we’re really successful. Only when we’re a publicly traded company with high profits will I say we’re successful. My company is $900 million, which is a lot of money, and I’m 20. But the truth is, says one of our main investors, that a startup is 1000 million is three errors away from zero.
