Quick commerce unicorn Zepto saw its revenues more than doubling, about a 120 percent increase, from Rs 2,026 crore in FY23 to Rs 4,455 crore in FY24 helped by an increasing number of customers moving their purchases away from e-commerce and kirana stores to 10-minute deliveries.
To acquire those customers, Zepto also spent a huge amount of money on marketing, cost of materials and more. The company’s total expenses increased 72 percent from Rs 3,350 crore in FY23 to Rs 5,747 crore in FY24.
However, despite the sharp increase in expenses, the company’s losses were down marginally, by around 2 percent, from Rs 1,272 crore in FY23 to Rs 1,249 core in FY24.
"Our accounting revenue has grown 120% year-on-year from...Even with 120 percent growth, our absolute losses came down year-on-year with PAT as a percentage of revenue improving from -63% in FY23 to -28% in FY24. We expect to continue this growth momentum with a clear path to PAT profitability in the near term," CEO and co-founder Aadit Palicha said on LinkedIn.
To be sure, these are filings made by Kiranakart Technologies Pvt Ltd, the India entity which earns revenues by licensing the brand name Zepto. Kiranakart is a business-to-business (B2B) company which indulges in consumer goods trading, provides logistics services and runs advertisements on the Zepto app.
In essence, Kiranakart Technologies owns the platform, Zepto, which is run by multiple entities to which Kiranakart supplies goods.
ALSO READ: Zepto’s cash burn zooms to Rs 250 crore a month on rising capex, closes Rs 2,500 crore funding round
Zepto is among the top three quick commerce companies in India which competes with Zomato’s Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart. While Blinkit is the market leader, it is a neck-to-neck battle between Swiggy Instamart and Zepto. However, Zepto is much larger in revenue terms.
While Blinkit had a revenue of Rs 2,301 crore and Swiggy Instamart had total sales of Rs 1,100 crore in FY24, Zepto was way ahead with a top line of Rs 4,455 crore in the fiscal year gone by.
The three players compete with Flipkart Minutes, Tata BigBasket and are preparing for the entry of giants like Amazon, among others.
By the end of FY24, Zepto had a cash and bank balance of Rs 692 crore, as per filings sourced via TheKredible. However, since then the company has strengthened its balance sheet and raised a total of Rs 11,475 crore ($1.35 billion) in back to back funding rounds in a span of five months.
Zepto has raised massive capital also because it is burning a lot of money. Moneycontrol had exclusively reported earlier that the company was burning Rs 250-300 crore per month, or about Rs 10 crore each day as it expands operations and sets up dark stores.
The improvement in operations come at a time when Zepto is preparing to flip its base back to India from Singapore and go public domestically. The company has already picked Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Axis Capital for its $500 million IPO slated to go live sometime in 2025, Moneycontrol had first reported.
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