Every rupee saved in supply chain costs goes back to customers: Zepto's Aadit Palicha at YC Startup School

IPO-bound Zepto’s cofounder & CEO Aadit Palicha said that the quick commerce startup has the potential to become India’s homegrown Amazon while speaking at the Y Combinator Startup School event in Bengaluru on Saturday.

“In the next 4-5 years we want to be the most successful grocery delivery platform in India,” he said, adding, “If we crack that.. we can be India’s homegrown Amazon.”

Palicha was speaking to YC’s general partner Jared Friedman, who had worked with Zepto during its YC days. “We were naive when we started… The only thing real for us was us,” he said, adding that the naivety of building a company was a big advantage for the founders. “You don’t know all the ways this can fail. You go in with first principles,” he added.


Zepto has begun engaging institutional investors ahead of its planned June–July public listing, as it steps up pre-IPO roadshows, ET reported on April 14. The company has confidentially filed draft papers for a Rs 11,000–12,000 crore IPO, largely comprising a primary issuance. The final size and pricing, however, remain undecided as the company awaits clearance from the country’s stock market regulator Sebi.

Palicha said that YC had a goal for Zepto to ensure that the 30 people around them ordered from them, which helped in staying focused. “We were able to create this insulated environment where it was the customer and us and that helped us,” said Palicha. “If we remove the tech from us then we are just a grocery store,” he added. “There’s a lot of efficiency that goes into it, from managing the logistics, operations and supply chain.”

He added that every rupee the platform saves as part of an efficient supply chain helps in saving a rupee for the customer.

Y Combinator is hosting its first Startup School event in India. YC partners Friedman, Ankit Gupta, and Jon Xu attended the event.

Also read: Large AI firms hoovering maximum funding, not enough for smaller startups: Y Combinator’s Ankit Gupta

Some of the key speakers include Vidit Aatrey, founder and CEO of Meesho, Harshil Mathur of Razorpay, Lalit Keshre of Groww, and Mukund Jha of Emergent — all YC alumni. Since its inception, Y Combinator has funded thousands of startups globally, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Reddit, Stripe, and Twitch.