Zepto raises $100 Mn in Series C at $570 Mn valuation

Ten-minute grocery delivery startup Zepto has raised $100 million in its Series C round led by YC Continuity. New and existing investors including Glade Brook, Nexus, Breyer Capital, Lachy Groom, Global Founders Capital and Contrary Capital also participated in the fresh round.

This Series C round comes just 45 days after the company announced its $60 million worth maiden fundraise in November. With this, Zepto has raised a total of $160 million largely from Silicon Valley-based investors to date.

Entrackr was first to report this round exclusively on November 11 with exact details. Importantly, Zepto is also seeking a larger size of investment at about $1 billion valuation. According to Entrackr’s sources, this round is still in making and may materialise at a later stage.

Zepto plans to use these proceeds to expand coverage across multiple cities in India and scale its team across functions, said the company in a press release. 

According to Zepto, it has expanded beyond a few pockets of Mumbai by launching in Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurugram, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune in the past two months and planning to set up operations in Kolkata soon. 

Zepto also claimed that it has set up 100 micro-warehouses (dark stores) with a capacity of handling over 2,500 orders a day since its launch five months ago.

The Aadit Palicha-led firm enables online grocery ordering and delivers them within 10 minutes in a few locations of Mumbai and the aforementioned cities.

Zepto directly competes with Zomato-backed BlinkIt (formerly Grofers) and with the likes of Swiggy and Ola. On Monday, Blinkit announced that it’s limiting its operations to only those areas where it can deliver products within 10 minutes. Over the past six months, the ten-minutes grocery segment has turned hyper-competitive and everyone is eyeing scale at any cost.

Apart from Zepto, Swiggy had committed to invest $700 million in Swiggy Instamart while BlinkIt is reportedly seeking more investment from Zomato.