Zepto’s cofounder and CEO Aadit Palicha recently shared that the company’s advertising division has seen an explosive rise, scaling its annualised revenue run-rate (ARR) from $40 million to over $200 million in just a year. He revealed this during a conversation with Y Combinator’s CEO, Garry Tan. While Palicha didn’t specify the exact timeline, he made it clear that this jump reflects serious momentum.
“Our ad platform has gone through a serious evolution,” he explained. “We’ve built a top-tier system here in India – from real-time bidding to campaign tools, attribution, and even AI-powered keyword suggestions. It’s not just functional; it performs.”
The company is also expanding beyond groceries, exploring categories like electronics, fashion, beauty, and general merchandise to fuel its next phase of growth.
But things haven’t always been smooth sailing.
Palicha opened up about a particularly difficult stretch between 2022 and 2023 when Zepto was on the edge of collapse. A harsh funding climate, the unexpected Silicon Valley Bank meltdown, and a series of misfires in hiring almost took the company down.
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“Looking back, we definitely made the wrong calls when it came to hiring in critical areas – finance, marketing, operations, category leadership. If we’d had the right people in place back then, we could’ve avoided some big setbacks,” he admitted. “That phase was brutal… our runway was tight, and the SVB incident came close to taking us out.”
He also reflected on Zepto’s earliest days, before its well-known pivot to the 10-minute delivery model. Investor confidence was low, user retention was weak, and the general sentiment around grocery delivery in India was bleak.
“There was a time when it felt like the whole thing was going to crash and burn,” Palicha said. “The feedback we were getting made us seriously question whether it was worth continuing. That was probably the moment when the company was closest to dying.”
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What got them through? Discipline. According to Palicha, it was a combination of financial restraint and pushing through tough decisions that helped Zepto survive and come out stronger.
