Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra's Zepto put brakes on growth-at-all-cost as the funding winter rolled in, in 2023. The cofounder duo re-evaluated and slowly pressed down on the clutch to deliver sustainable growth backed by strong customer and economic metrics. It has made it a unicorn in an otherwise freezing funding winter that was 2023
Dude, the party is over,” a grim voice from the other side of the call broke the bad news. It was 10 in the morning, and Aadit Palicha was in the midst of crafting another speedy move to his overall frenetic land-grab strategy for Zepto. From one dark store in July 2021, the young entrepreneur raced to 150 stores, and an annualised sales of $200 million by April the next year. Notching up such numbers in a market that had more naysayers than believers, Zepto’s furious pace of growth quickly became the talk of the town.
(This story appears in the 12 January, 2024 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)