Indian quick commerce startup Zepto has raised four hundred million dollars in a funding round. The new investment was led by California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, a United States based pension fund. This round includes a mix of primary and secondary investment. Several existing investors also participated, including Avenir, Avra, Lightspeed, Glade Brook, The Stepstone Group, and Nexus Venture Partners. Following this funding, the company plans to go public next year.
Zepto competes with several other quick commerce players. These include Eternal’s BlinkIt, Swiggy Instamart, and Tata-owned BigBasket, all of which are part of publicly listed companies. The startup has been actively raising funds, having collected one point three billion dollars in a span of several months last year.
Since Zepto’s last funding round in November 2024, the competitive landscape has shifted. Swiggy made its public debut on India’s stock exchange, and Blinkit surpassed Zomato in gross order value for the first quarter of 2025.
The company also faces competition from established ecommerce players. Flipkart and Amazon have both started their own quick commerce delivery services. Beyond these broad players, startups are exploring verticalized e-commerce offerings. In food delivery, Accel-backed Swish and Zing are operating. For apparel delivery within an hour, companies include publicly listed Nykaa, Flipkart-owned Myntra, Silkk, and Blip. Lightspeed-backed Snabbit allows users to book home services like cleaning within ten minutes. Other startups like FirstClub are taking a curation approach to grocery delivery.
Zepto and its CEO Aadit Palicha are confident about the startup’s growth. Palicha stated the company has scaled from five hundred thousand daily orders five quarters ago to one point seven million daily orders. He predicted this growth will continue. He explained that a key metric for this funding round was the company’s ability to turn dark stores profitable while acquiring over ten million new monthly transacting users. He noted that even while investing in customer acquisition and new store launches, the company was able to keep turning stores profitable.
BlinkIt, Instamart, and Zepto operate in many of the same spaces, with food delivery being the most notable. However, Zepto had to pause its Zepto Cafe offering in forty-four cities due to staff challenges.
Signs for the quick commerce market in India are encouraging. Morgan Stanley predicts the market could reach forty-two billion dollars by 2030. Bernstein said in a note in March that it could reach one hundred billion dollars in a decade. The analyst firm also noted that in target markets, quick commerce is now the primary way people are buying groceries.
Zepto has largely concentrated on expanding services in major Indian cities. J.P. Morgan noted earlier this month that BlinkIt has its dark store network in more than two hundred four cities, compared to Swiggy Instamart in over one hundred four cities, and Zepto in over eighty cities. Zepto has over one thousand stores in these cities and plans to add hundreds more over the next twelve months. The startup noted that while most of its business comes from metro cities, it now receives close to twenty percent of its total order volume from smaller cities.
This investment is notable for CalPERS. The pension fund typically invests in venture capital through intermediary funds rather than leading direct investments in startups. CalPERS has been aggressively expanding its venture exposure since 2022 after what officials called a lost decade of underperformance. It is scaling its venture allocation from around eight hundred million dollars to a targeted five billion dollars. The fund’s decision to lead a round in an Indian quick-commerce startup signals strong institutional confidence in India’s rapid delivery sector. It may also indicate CalPERS’ growing appetite for direct venture investments in emerging markets. Notably, CalPERS is also an investor in funds of Zepto’s existing backers, like Lightspeed and General Catalyst.