Zepto's Aadit Palicha accuses rival CFO of targeting quick commerce company with a smear campaign

Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha

Aadit Palicha, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Zepto, on May 25 alleged that the chief financial officer (CFO) of a rival firm is running a smear campaign to cause damage to Zepto, the brand and the company. The developments come at a time when the competitive intensity in the quick commerce space is heating up.

While Palicha did not take names, he said “this episode is below the stature expected of the CFO of a high-quality company.” CEO Palicha alleged that the CFO has been calling Zepto’s investors and making “wild allegations about us with no empirical evidence, giving out false numbers/Excel sheets on Zepto through sources known to journalists, and paying bots on social media to spread a negative narrative.”Zepto competes very closely with Blinkit, which is owned by Eternal (formerly Zomato), and Swiggy Instamart.

In the wider quick commerce space, Zepto also counts Flipkart Minutes and Tata BigBasket as rivals. The main reason why the rival CFO is running this smear campaign, Palicha says, is because “they are starting to get nervous about how fast Zepto's EBITDA is improving.”

In response, CEO Palicha shed light on Zepto’s financials. Zepto has grown from approximately Rs 750 crore of gross order value (GOV) per month in May 2024 to Rs 2,400 crore of GOV per month in May 2025.

Zepto’s definition of GOV has fruits and vegetables at selling price and includes Ad Revenue. Some rivals do not include ad revenue while calculating GOV.CEO Palicha added that the company’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) from January 2025 to May 2025 has improved by 20 absolute percentage points (2,000 basis points) and is approaching single-digit territory.

“Our cash burn is down approximately 65% over that same period,” Palicha added but did not provide specifics. Moneycontrol had earlier reported that Zepto was burning Rs 250 crore a month around November.

At the same time, even as Zepto’s EBITDA improved from January 2025 to May 2025, the company has still grown roughly 20 percent in GOV in that period. “That represents an average 4% to 5% month-on-month growth,” Palicha said.

Zepto’s Palicha also reiterated that the company is well capitalised. “As of the beginning of this quarter, we have approximately Rs 7,445 crore of net cash in the bank, fully reconciled to bank statements. With our current cash burn trajectory, we have many years of runway,” he said.

Zepto is not planning a large-scale rationalisation of stores. On the contrary, it is ramping up store launches, as per Palicha’s social media post.Zepto last had close to 1,000 dark stores, Palicha had said, largely in line with rivals Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart.

While competition in quick commerce, and the wider startup space is not new, it is rare for the CEO of a large new-age company to publicly call out their rivals. In fact, this is the second time this has happened with Zepto’s name being involved.

Earlier in the year, Eternal group CEO Deepinder Goyal said the quick commerce industry was burning Rs 5,000 crore per quarter and Zepto accounted for ‘substantially more than half’ of that amount.

The post had also triggered a widespread debate around Zepto.

Zepto, valued at $5 billion, has become the second-largest player in the quick commerce industry ahead of Swiggy Instamart but behind Blinkit, Moneycontrol had reported.

However, Swiggy chief Sriharsha Majety, in the company’s earnings call, was not very convinced, just like Eternal’s Goyal. “I think it's difficult to estimate market share accurately as the comparability of GOVs has been limited because of some non-standard definitions. Us and our listed peer have now provided net order value (NOV), which we hope will be a much better barometer and a real measure of consumer spend on the platform,” Majety had said.

While he did not take specific names, Zepto is the only company among the top three players that does not report NOVs yet.