Hello Friends

I am Gijo Vijayan, I am a blogger, author and entrepreneur from India. I write review blogs on various products and services. Today I want to introduce you to Zepto – 10 minutes grocery delivery app.

Zepto is known as an online grocery delivery app. Zepto is a Mumbai-based quick commerce startup.

While travelling in Chennai, I saw this company’s advertisement posted on an auto rickshaw.

Just for my curiosity, me and my team ordered some groceries online.

Zepto promise 10 minutes delivery of grocery products in their advertisement, we wanted to check if it really works that way.

We ordered few products from our Location in Chennai (T Nagar) and to our surprise, we got the delivery of the products we ordered within 10 minutes.

It was a fast execution. We were surprised by the fast execution of the delivery of groceries by this company.

I personally feel that this company has great future ahead.

If you are at home and wants to have groceries at your doorstep during an emergency, you can rely on “Zepto”.

Later when I researched about this company, I came to know about this company in a better way.

Zepto means to get your ordered groceries in just 10 minutes.

It has more than 100 places called dark stores that lie in higher-demand neighborhoods. All these stores use technology for performing tasks such as the placement of products. Some of the other tasks they perform like deciding the store locations, and mapping delivery routes for avoiding heavy traffic congestions. It delivers grocery products including cooking necessities, fresh produce, personal care items, snacks and beverages, and home cleaning items. Here below, I listed some features of the Zepto App.

• Local specialties on Zepto
• Lightning-Fast Deliveries by Zepto
• Safety Measures
• No Minimum Order Conditions on Zepto
• Live Order Tracking on Zepto App

This 10-minute grocery delivery system is started by 2 Stanford dropouts (Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra).

The Mumbai-based company, which is among the most buzzy startups this year, has more than doubled its valuation to $570 million post the funding in just two months when it last raised $60 million at a valuation of $225 million.

New and existing backers including Glade Brook Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Global Founders Capital, and Contrary Capital, also participated in the round.

This company is growing very fast, at the rate of 200% per month.

The startup will use the fresh infusion of capital to expand coverage, build out different categories and strengthen its back-end technology. It also plans to go up to 1,000-2,000 employees from its existing 400. The bulk of its employees are in its operations team.

ZEPTO aims to hit $1 billion in annualised sales over the next 4-6 quarters. Even as Zepto has lowered discounts, he said that the transaction numbers haven’t been affected.

Can you imagine: It takes just 60 seconds for Zepto in processing and carrying of goods from the dark store as per its standard procedures? This is all because this setup is a future model as it is something which we use daily and we want it to be delivered instantly.

Business Model Of Zepto

Dark store model : As discussed above, zepto doesn’t use commission from local shops for delivery, because this method may bring more bad than good. One example of such a failed model is Grofers, Grofers used to monetize itself on commissions by delivering groceries from tied local shops but soon this model proved to be a mistake of grofers as grofers didn’t able to control quality and regular supply. Zepto doesn’t repeat that mistake and instead of tying up and partnering with local shops, zepto uses its own dark stores and micro-warehouses, which gives zepto full control over their supply and quality.

Hence, Zepto replaced local stores from its local dark stores with a blend of technology to overcome the challenges which grofers faced previously.

Zepto works on using the data to identify the most ordered items across its platform. Using the same data, Zepto creates location clusters in the form of micro warehouses using vacant and unused spaces like marriage halls, garages, basements, parkings and tent houses. These days, these places are called ghost storages or warehouses as well. Using its data and stock, zepto delivers the ordered items within 2–3 kms of the radius using its delivery partners in 10 minutes.

My honest review on Zepto

I think Zepto is here to stay, The concept of dark stores will work out very well. With help of latest technologies powered by AI (Artificial intelligence) the delivery is fast and customer can be served well. This model can catch up well with upper middle class families who purchase groceries from branded stores like Reliance Fresh, More, Bigbazaar, D mart etc. But ZEPTO is going to face tough competition from large companies in future. There is every reason to believe that other companies too will soon copy their model and start competition. The future pantry services that Reliance Fresh, Amazon etc will be a tough competition to Zepto.

The margins are very thin and operational costs are high, so in the long term, they have to evolve, else the company will be even facing tough situations and may have to deliver groceries at low value to stay in market for longer term.

I suggest this company must go for a 24 hour delivery model that means anyone must be able to order groceries day and night.

Adding new products like medicines, books, and other items can help the company to grow many times. They can also combine an ecommerce model along with physical delivery on a long term.

All the best to the Zepto team for this great initiative. I am sure this company will soon become a unicorn, giving employment to lakhs of youths in India.

Regards

Gijo Vijayan
Blogger, author
Chennai, India
Mob: +91 9798404042 (Whatsapp)
Email: gijo@gijokv.com
www.gijokv.com

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