Things are heating up in the rapidly-growing quick commerce space in India.
Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha has called Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal’s claims “verifiably untrue” after the latter had implied that Zepto was losing more than Rs. 2,500 crore per quarter. “We think the total burn for all companies in quick commerce is around Rs 5,000 crore per quarter, conservatively speaking. Substantially more than half of this is by Zepto,” Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal had said in an interview to ET. “Compared to this, we’re burning very low numbers. Last quarter, Blinkit burned around Rs 35 crore per month on average,” he added.
But this statement wasn’t taken to kindly by Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha. “In an Economic Times article today, Deepinder Goyal – whom I deeply respect as an entrepreneur – made an inaccurate statement about Zepto,” Palicha wrote on LinkedIn. “His words were that Quick Commerce was burning 5,000 Crores per quarter of which “substantially more than half of this is by Zepto” – implying that we are losing substantially more than 2,500 Crores per quarter. This statement is verifiably untrue and it will be clear when we publicly file our financial statements,” he added.
“However, I know Deepinder, and I know he has only good intentions; this quote could have been taken out of context or said as an honest mistake,” Palicha said. “Deepinder started Zomato when I was 5 years old and he has become a role model for the Indian startup ecosystem. I have personally read all of his blogs and it’s a privilege to learn from and compete with Zomato. Our genuine intention is to build the Indian startup ecosystem together in good-faith, and build a world-class product for the Indian consumer,” Palicha added.
It’s a pretty straightforward rebuttal, and with the added zing of indirectly calling Deepinder Goyal old by saying that he was just five years old when Zomato was founded. But the Rs. 2,500 crore per quarter number does seem on the higher side — it implies an annual loss of Rs. 10,000 crore for Zepto. Zepto, though, had reported losses of Rs. 1,248 crore in FY24, which means that it would’ve had to raise its burn rate by nearly 10x since then. Both Zepto and Blinkit are competing fiercely against each other, and both are making losses as they look to establish their businesses. It remains to be seen what Zepto’s actual loss turns out to be, but Palicha at the moment seems to be in no mood letting insinuations slide that it’s around Rs. 10,000 crore.