Buoyed by the success of online grocery sales, quick commerce unicorn Zepto is optimistic of growing 2-3X every year, and sees itself surpassing established offline retailer DMart in a couple years.
Co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha, speaking at an event in Delhi on Saturday, said: “DMart is a $30-billion company and they are 4.5X our size in sales. If we continue to execute well, we can grow 2-3X every year, and possibly surpass them in the next 18-24 months.”
Pointing out that grocery and household essentials are the “mother of all categories” sold on leading e-commerce platforms Flipkart and Amazon in India, Palicha said the grocery market was around $650 billion in India in FY23, and at 9% CAGR, is expected to become $850 billion by FY29. “If you look at electronics, apparel, furniture, and combine everything, and double it, it’s still not as large as grocery and household essentials,” he said.
“If we execute well, we can realistically take this business from over Rs 10,000 crore in top line today to potentially Rs 2.5 lakh crore over the next 5-10 years,” he said.
“We have been able to turn 75% of our stores fully profitable and so we want to continue that trajectory even as we are expanding into new cities,” Palicha said, adding that the biggest challenge for the company is to hire people with the right attitude.
The company’s revenues grew over fivefold to over Rs 10,000 crore in FY24 from about Rs 2,000 crore in FY23. Last month, Zepto raised $665 million in an investment round that valued the firm at $3.6 billion, almost triple of what it was worth a year ago. Zepto has about 29% market share in the quick e-commerce segment, up from 15% in March 2022. The company is preparing to list soon.