Aadit Palicha, co-founder and CEO of Zepto, on Tuesday termed as “inaccurate”, the statement made by Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal that more than half of the quarterly cash burn in the quick commerce industry comes from the Bengaluru-based firm alone. Palicha was referring to a statement made by Goyal in an interview to an economic daily.
“We think the total burn for all companies in quick commerce is around Rs 5,000 crore per quarter, conservatively speaking. Substantially more than half of this is by Zepto,” Goyal had said in the interview. He had said that Zomato’s Blinkit is burning around Rs 35 crore per month on an average.
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In a LinkedIn post on Tuesday, Palicha said, “This statement is verifiably untrue and it will be clear when we publicly file our financial statements”.
He, however, added that Goyal is a role model for the startup ecosystem.
“I know Deepinder, and I know he has only good intentions; this quote could have been taken out of context or said as an honest mistake,” he said. “Deepinder started Zomato when I was five years old and he has become a role model for the Indian startup ecosystem,” Palicha added.
According to analysts, the cash burn by Zepto is likely to be in the range of Rs 350-400 crore per month. This would mean Rs 1,100-1,200 crore per quarter.
Due to Zepto’s strategy of rapid dark store expansion, its closest rivals, Blinkit and Instamart have also started investing towards dark stores more aggressively.
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Blinkit has a target of reaching 2,000 dark stores by December this year, and Instamart is looking to cross the 1,000-store mark by March. Zepto is aiming for 1,200 stores by the end of FY25.
Last month, Palicha had shared that the company’s gross order value (GOV) tripled over the last eight months to around $3 billion (Rs 24,500 crore). This GOV is similar to that of Blinkit and much more than Instamart.
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