Zepto elevates execs, plans to list in 2-3 yrs
Online grocery company Zepto on Wednesday elevated several key executives, ahead of a planned stock market listing over the next two-to-three years.
Chief operating officer (COO) Vinay Dhanani has been promoted as president, supply chain and category, while Vikas Sharma takes over as new COO; Sharma will now lead operations from the backend distribution centres to the last mile, and the supply planning in between.
Meanwhile, Viral Jhaveri is moving into an expanded role of chief growth officer (CGO), leading customer acquisition, retention, and brand.
The move comes after the company announced Ramesh Bafna as new chief financial officer in April.
The management plans to take Zepto public in two to three years.
“In the past 12 months, there’s been this heavy funding winder.
Most consumer internet companies across industries have taken a massive hit in growth and have tried to cut corners.
Zepto has multiplied its business four times and turned dozens of dark stores fully profitable.
Our dark stores are not only turning profitable at scale, but also turning profitable faster,” said Aadit Palicha, co-founder and CEO, Zepto.
Palicha said the quick-commerce company started in 2021 has “squeezed out” the efficiency from sourcing, manufacturing, manpower productivity to route optimization and dark store utilization.
Founded by Stanford University dropouts Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, Zepto delivers over 6,000 grocery products in 10 minutes through a network of delivery hubs or dark stores across the country.
Zepto operates in all top metros via 200 dark stores.
However, over the past few months, it has slowed down the pace of opening new dark stores.
A funding crunch is also plaguing several Indian consumer technology companies.
Our objective is to multiply the business over the course in the next 12 to 18 months and go north of ₹10,000 crore in annualized sales by next year and get there while being Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) positive,” Palicha said.
On future fund raise, Palicha said the company does not immediately need funding.
Given how low our burn is today and the amount of cash that we have in the bank, we are really not in a position where we need to raise capital any time soon,” he said.
Estimates by consulting firm RedSeer suggest that India’s quick commerce market is expected touch $5.5 billion by 2025, up from $0.3 billion in 2021.
However, the business is based on high cash burn as products sold by these firms are easily available in stores as well as on online marketplaces; meanwhile, only a small pool of consumers will be willing to pay delivery fee for convenience these platforms offer.
Bylivemint
