Zepto eyes $100M from Indian offices in third funding in 6 months

Zepto is in advanced stages of talks to raise $100 million in new investment, its third in the last six months, as the leading Indian quick-commerce startup looks to rope in more domestic investors, sources familiar with the talks told TechCrunch.

The Mumbai-headquartered startup, which delivers grocery items and office stationery to customers’ doorsteps in 10 minutes in multiple Indian cities, is raising the new investment from Indian family offices and high-net-worth individuals.

Motilal Oswal, the asset management giant that earlier invested $40 million in Zepto, is running the mandate for the new funding deliberation, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter is private. The financial services firm has already received commitments for more than half of the allocation, according to another source familiar with the situation.

The new investment values Zepto at a $5 billion post-money valuation, the same value at which it recently closed a $340 million financing round in August. Zepto has raised more than $1 billion in the last six months and all of it remains in its bank.

Zepto is planning to go public next year, and the new fundraise is aimed at expanding the base of domestic investors on its cap table. Zepto counts Avra, Lightspeed, Nexus, StepStone Group, YC Continuity, Glade Brook, and Contrary among its backers.

Even as quick-commerce startups are retreating, consolidating, or shutting down in many parts of the world, the model is showing encouraging signs in India. Quick-commerce startups are on track to do a sale of more than $6 billion this year, according to TechCrunch’s analysis.

In response to the fast rise of quick commerce, which is increasingly shaping the consumer behavior in India, many e-commerce incumbents — including Flipkart, Myntra, and Nykaa have been forced to scramble to find ways to lower the time they take to deliver items to their customers.

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Shares of DMart, which runs one of the largest brick-and-mortar retail chains in India, fell this week after the firm confirmed that it was losing some business to quick-commerce startups.

“We believe Quick Commerce players are expanding cities, categories, SKUs, AOVs and discounts, and creating parallel commerce for convenience-seeking customers,” analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note this week.

Zepto — which competes with Zomato-owned Blinkit, Prosus-backed Swiggy’s Instamart, and Tata’s BigBasket — has grown its annualized net run rate considerably in recent months, according to sources and an internal document reviewed by TechCrunch.

Zepto co-founder and chief executive Aadit Palicha told a group of investors in August that the startup projects to grow at 150% in the next 12 months, TechCrunch earlier reported.