Zepto likely to become bigger than D-Mart in 18-24 months: CEO Aadit Palicha on growth plan

The 10-minute grocery delivery store Zepto believes that it will become bigger than D-Mart in sales in the next 18 to 24 months, Zepto co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha said.

"DMart is a $30 billion company and they are only 4.5 times our size in sales. If we continue to execute well, we will continue to grow 2-3 times every year. And potentially surpass them in next 18-24 months which is an exceptionally well executed consumer company," he said at JIIF Foundation Day event in Delhi.

According to Palicha, India's grocery market is worth 650 billion in FY23 and will grow to 8850 billion by the end of FY29, a growth of 9%. Zepto will focus on the top 40 cities in the country targeting 50 to 75 million households.

"Grocery is bigger than all the categories that Amazon and Flipkart service. We are building the mother of all categories... We have had a crazy journey in the past 3 years. We have gone from zero to ₹10,000 crore in less than 3 years. It is the fastest company in Internet India to do that. Flipkart did it in 4 years. We did it in 2.5 years,"

Palicha aims to grow from ₹10,000 crore to ₹2.5 lakh crore in the next few years.

Zepto is on a fundraising spree since the last few months.

Recently, it raised $200 million in a Series D funding round led by American technology startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, at a valuation of $900 million.

In January, Zepto had raised $100 million in a Series C round led by Continuity Fund at a valuation of $570 million. In November, it had raised $60 million. The company has raised $360 million so far.

Zepto was founded by Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra in 2021.

The company operates a network of cloud stores to deliver groceries in under 10 minutes.

The top players in this space are Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, BigBasket(BB Now) by Tata.