Friends, 5 years ago, no one would have even dreamed that something like grocery can be delivered in 10 minutes, but it was made possible by a company named Zappado, whose valuation is currently more than Rs 6895 crore. Yes, you read it right, this company was started in April 2021 by two brothers Ya Vohra and Aditya Pali, which has become a unicorn in just 2 years and has reached the very poor level. Along with this, both of them have also become the youngest Indian entrepreneurs to enter the 1000 crore club according to India Future Unicorn Index 2022,
but do you know where did they get the idea to start Zappado, what is their business model and how did they make grocery delivery possible in 10 minutes, so as always, we start where we make article related to business startups and entrepreneurship and today we will know about the success journey of Zappado which surprised everyone.
Table of Contents
Evolution of Grocery Delivery in India
friends, if we talk about India, Flipkart came first here, which made two-step delivery famous in India, after this BigBasket made even more revolutionary changes and started delivering groceries within a specific day, but Zepto killed all of them by making the delivery time 10 minutes and changed the whole definition of product delivery in it, so let’s know where did the idea of starting this revolutionary company Zepto come from?
The Founders and Their Background
The co-founders of Zepto, Kaivalya Bohra and Aditya, both are childhood friends. Although they belong to Mumbai, but most of their childhood was spent in Dubai. It was a matter of coincidence that Kaivalya Bohra and Aditya, both were natives of Mumbai but lived in Dubai. Both studied in the same school in Dubai and not only this, the fathers of both were engineers. Such similarities helped in developing a very deep friendship between them.
Passion for Technology and Early Experiments
Both the founders of Zepto are very interested in technology and stick to their core values. They liked to experiment a lot even in small projects and were also very interested in things like Chrome extensions, mobile applications or websites. That is why Kaivalya and Aditya thought of taking admission in Stanford University to study computer science and luckily both of them got selected for this.
The Pandemic and a Business Opportunity
After studying for some time, Corona attacked and both of them came to Mumbai and started living. During the pandemic, they were spending time alone away from their families and at that time, as we all know, the entire market was closed and even if the shops of essential items were open, people did not want to go out. In such a situation, both of them also thought it safer to order groceries online, but the biggest problem in this was that after ordering online, sometimes it took 6 to 7 days for the delivery of groceries, due to which people had to face a lot of problems and had to wait for a long time.
The Birth of Kiran Card
Now Kaivalya and Aditya were facing such problems and they also saw that their neighbors were also facing similar problems. After seeing all these things, they thought of finding a solution to this and from here they got the idea of doing grocery delivery themselves. Working on this idea, they started delivering vegetables and grocery items to people’s friends and from here Kiran Card started which used to work by connecting with local stores. This company cut the delivery time of one week to just 45 minutes, that is, where people used to get their grocery items in a week, now they started getting it in just 45 minutes, which is really a very good start.
Transition to Dark Store Model
In the beginning of Kiran Card, he used to deliver grocery only in the areas around him, but due to uniform demand, he also hired many delivery partners to reach out to more and more people. When he talked to the customers and tried to know their experience with Kiran Card, he came to know that people are not very satisfied with it because many times they get the same items.
But at that time there was no other option available in the market that could deliver groceries in 45 minutes, so customers were still using Kiran Card only. Now people were saying that if the door is opened, then maybe they will never use it again due to bad user experience. Now after knowing this, its founder tried to understand Kiran even more and made a lot of changes to provide people with a better user experience.
The Growth and Expansion of Zepto
After doing a lot of experiments, he started working with the dark store model. Kiran stores are basically a kind of micro warehouses which are built in the middle of the city. There are many storage cells here where goods are stored and no kind of customer is allowed to enter this dark store, rather only employees are allowed to go inside. The Kiran card issued for these dark stores was not only successful in easily identifying the things needed by the people, but the other benefit of this was that the delivery time of groceries was reduced from 45 minutes to 10 minutes.
The Business Model of Zepto
Now this was the reason that the number of visitors on Kiran Card started increasing very fast and their negative reviews turned into positive feedback. Now after this success, both the founders rebuilt the company to take their business to another level, in which the name of the company was changed and this is how Zepto started. Currently, they are providing their services only in 11 cities of India, which includes big cities like Delhi, Chennai, Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Optimized Logistics and Speedy Deliveries
Now you will be surprised to know that more than 10 million people use Zepto for grocery shopping, but do you know on which business model this company works and how it made grocery delivery possible in just 10 minutes? Let’s know about it in detail.
Now as we have already told that Zepto has opened many dark stores, but this dark store is also operated in a very optimized way, like with the help of data analytics, it is seen which products are in demand. After analyzing which areas have the highest and which products have the average or lowest demand, the most ordered products are kept at the right place from where the employees can access them quickly.
Competing with Industry Giants
Due to all these strategies, today Zepto has made 10-minute delivery possible and you will be surprised to know that sometimes they deliver the grocery in 7 minutes as well and this is the reason that Zepto raised a funding of 490 crores within 6 months of its launch. If we talk about the valuation of the company, it is more than 6895 crores and today it has 86 stores, which in 2022 were delivering more than 120 million items like chips, ice cream and soft drinks.
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Future Expansion Plans
Along with this, users living in small cities like you and me will also be able to get the experience of 10-minute grocery delivery. By the way, how many of you have already had the experience of 10-minute delivery? If you have any answer then please tell us in the comment section and also share one of your experiences. That’s all for today’s article. If you liked the article then please like and share it and if you are new on the article. See you soon in another such interesting article. Till then goodbye.
