How a small start up Zepto is competing with big players in the online grocery market

There is a problem with the most ecommerce start up company of India. They have dis-loyal customers. It means general public download both Amazon and Flipkart or Swiggy and Zomato. They only order from where they get higher discount.

Same situation is in the online grocery market which was dominated by Grofers, Swiggymart, Bigbasket and Danzo. People usually use two or three of them and only ordered where they get higher discount.  It was happening in last few years. 

Birth of Zepto

But everything changed when two teenager come together to make a start up which shaken all the other grocery companies. Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra started a start up named Kirana Mart in September 2020. It`s function was same as Bigbasket and Grofers. But they changed their business process in January 2021 and renamed their start up as Zepto. 

Insane growth 

They showed an insane growth after that. They get more than 60 percent customer retention which was unimaginable even in big online grocery market. Now the question arise what did these two 19 years old teenager do that they get such success in short span of time. Why people are nowadays ordering from zepto instead of grofers or bigbasket?

Starting story

These two were locked in a small apartment in the time of lockdown, they started this online delivery start up which deliver grocery in houses. They noticed a pattern whenever a delivery was taken less than 20 minutes of time, they got re order from that customer. So they highly focused on the one thing. They started to deliver in fastest time under 30 minutes.

Change in pattern

Earlier customer got adapted in 1-2 hour delivery but when zepto started this 10 minute delivery everything changed in the online market. They used to deliver in such short span of time using dark store model. As local people`s buying pattern, purchasing frequency and spending capacity data are available with the help of pre study before entering, they used to pile up their storage that way. 

Dark store model

They open a dark store warehouse which has the capacity to fulfil the demand of about 3 km radius. They pick up their order very fast. All the employee working in dark store have the tablets, so they know exactly which item is placed where. So after picking up the item, they packed immediately and hand over it to delivery partner. It takes only 1-2 minutes after you placed order. Delivery partners were well trained about the traffic, so they find shorter route to make the delivery in between 10 minutes.

Final Thoughts

This is the way Zepto can delivery so fast. When other big players are focusing in giving big discounts they are focused to give the delivery in the fastest time. Till now, there strategy was successful. But now other online grocery company like grofers also following the same technique. They recently announced they will deliver most of the order in 10 minutes. 

It will be interesting to see whether this small start up Zepto can compete like big players Grofers, Bigbasket or not in future.

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