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The quick commerce firm, Zepto, has raised an additional $340 million (Rs 2,850 crore) from General Catalyst, Mars Growth Capital, and Epiq Capital, and the startup says it has raised more than $1 billion in the last two months. The most recent funding that involved funding from Sequoia capital, which was a part of the previous round alongside other investors, including StepStone, Lightspeed, DST Global, and Contrary, has taken Zepto’s valuation to $5 billion, setting it at 3x. It may also rise to 5 time within one year among other devastating impacts that the disease has on humanity. This has been due to factors such as fast-growing quick-delivery market and a large amount of capital invested in this area. Before, Zepto has received $665m in funding at $3 billion company valuation. 6 billion in June and got to unicorn status in August 2023 with $1. Business ousted it to $4 billion valuation after it secured $200 million in funding.

Zepto has been growing its operations very fast to new markets and new Dark stores, or mini-warehouses. Currently running 400 dark stores, Ocado hopes to have 700 dark stores and then review its expansion model, primarily focusing a scale that results in break-even point. That is amid rising competition from other large players in the quick commerce segment like Tata’s BigBasket, Flipkart Minutes, and Amazon India that are introducing or ramping up their own quick-delivery operations. Blinkit, one of the main competitors of Zepto, as well as Swiggy Instamart, are also actively growing: Blinkit by June had 639 dark stores more and planned to reach 1,000 by March 2025.

The chief executive of Zepto, Aadit Palicha, continued this focus on the execution and highlighted that the company is on course of achieving an annualized gross sales run rate of $1. Ago, it reported total sales of $5 billion and has set its target to achieve $3 billion. 5 billion by December of 2025 of the cumulative inflows and outflows of foreign direct investment to and from developing countries. The last round of funding was motivated by a chance to enter into partnership with Neeraj Arora of General Catalyst that became the board member of Zepto and the necessity of the company’s balance sheet shoring up with the constant growth.
Quick commerce, initially focused on grocery delivery, has expanded into multiple categories, now offering over 10,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) and aiming to increase this to 20,000-25,000 SKUs ahead of the festive season. According to industry estimates, quick commerce could account for 40-50% of e-commerce in certain categories within the next three years, growing from the current 10-15% of the total segment. A recent Nomura report projects that the quick-commerce market will achieve 100-110% year-on-year growth in gross order value by FY26, driven by substantial dark-store additions by leading companies.