Product Café: Meet Zepto, a startup that grew to a multi-million dollar company 📈
Product Café: Meet Zepto, a startup that grew to a multi-million dollar company 📈
Product Management, UX, Startups, and more — freshly curated by Zeda.io.
Hello, all you product-loving folks!
Welcome to this week’s edition of Product Café, your weekend cup of coffee for everything product management, startups and more. ☕
This week, I want to talk about groceries and time, and if I am late to buy milk, my folks would never let me hear the end of it. 😅
But a booming startup in India is fixing this problem – by delivering groceries across major cities in 10 minutes. (that’s how long it takes me just to get dressed to go out and buy groceries 🤐) This one USP was a game-changer for them, and according to resources, within just 9 months since inception, their revenue grew 800% in the last quarter and they’ve also raised $200 million in funding.
The company is currently valued at $900 million.
Fun fact: Safe to say that just like their 10 minute USP, their million-dollar funding and valuation did not take much time either.
Here’s how they grew their business from scratch to success in such a short span:
The idea💡
The founders of Zepto, Kaivalya Vohra and Aadit Palicha were living in a small apartment in the bustling metro city of Mumbai, but they found it incredibly difficult to get groceries and other basic supplies delivered to their house on time, especially during the pandemic.
They found a potential market here, to create super fast deliveries. From their prior experience creating a delivery app, they realised that customers who bought again were those whose groceries were delivered to them within 30 minutes. Even though the products delivered were the same in terms of quality and price, the satisfaction a customer got when their products were delivered faster was exponentially more.
The business model 📝
Zepto executes its 10-minute delivery strategy through its many dark stores and micro-warehouses across the country. Dark stores are small neighbourhood warehouses that consumers cannot access directly and are used only for online orders. These dark stores are also designed for easy navigation – allowing packers to move quickly to pack items in an order. Zepto’s AI-powered tools also help keep track of inventory levels and allocate drivers intelligently.
The competition 🏁
Currently, Zepto is the only quick commerce company delivering products within 10 minutes, whereas its competitors like Swiggy Instamart and Dunzo take about 30 minutes or so. Another factor that sets Zepto apart from its competitors is that Zepto does not charge delivery fees. Moreover, they also provide discounts and promotional offers on many of their products.
Twitter Twitter on the wall, what’s the best tweet of ‘em all? 🐦
In other news…Google is releasing some “oh wow” features
If you missed out on the Google I/O 2022 conference which happened a few days ago, don’t worry cause we got you covered. We collated a list of features they’re planning to release this year:
1. AR in Google Maps 🗺️
You’re walking down a new restaurant or grocery store and want to know how good it is. Instead of searching for the reviews online, you just have to open your camera and hold your phone up and point at the building. Google will automatically show you the reviews, recent photos of food, highlight street signs and more.
2. Map results based on time of day 📍
Another handy feature they’re adding is how Google Maps can highlight search results based on the time of the day. So in the morning, there would be bigger pins on coffee shops and breakfast joints whereas, in the evenings, these bigger pins would be on sandwich and other snack shops.
3. New shopping experiences 🛒
You see something you like. You take a picture or a screenshot, and then you forget about it. But Google Lens now gets an update where it can scan the products in your picture and show you the same or similar items from different online merchants.
Before proceeding to check out and buy that pair of shoes, we sometimes get distracted by a notification on our phones and then those shoes end up slipping from our minds. Google now shows you your open cart from different merchants whenever you open a new tab. This way you can pick up where you left off.
Credit: https://blog.google/products/shopping/more-ways-to-shop/
4. AI tools to diagnose TB and skin conditions 🦠
How cool is that! Google is currently developing an AI-powered technology that can scan your chest x-rays and give a preliminary diagnosis of TB, a disease that affects up to 10 million people per year. For an illness that’s hard to diagnose and commonly found in middle and low-income groups, this technology could save them up to 80% cost.
Credit: https://blog.google/technology/health/tuberculosis-screening-ai-io-2021/
The next AI-tech they’re developing is a dermatology assist tool to help diagnose skin conditions. After taking pictures of your skin on your phone, you will be asked a few questions about your symptoms. After careful analysis, Google will give you a list of possible diagnoses that you can use to research further.
Credit: https://blog.google/technology/health/ai-dermatology-preview-io-2021/
Extra credit ✨
I want to end this week’s newsletter by sharing a super-easy way to learn about product, marketing and DTC from top 1% industry experts! And the best part? It’s completely free.
Meet HelloMeets’ 50+ free membership!
As a member, you get access to:
50 in-depth recorded sessions covering Product, Design, Marketing and DTC concepts.
Network with some of India’s top founders, product managers, designers, programmers and marketers.
Receive HelloMeets’ weekly newsletter, where they share interesting highlights from the key meetups that happened recently.
Here are some of the topics covered in the expert sessions:
What Startups Can Learn From Netflix’s Culture
Playbook on Scaling a direct-to-consumer brand
How does Razorpay’s product team prioritise features
And so much more!
That’s all folks! Have something you want to share? Put them in the comments below and you’ll hear back from us in less than 10 minutes (No offence Zepto huehue 😆)
See you again next week! 🥂
It’s hard to explain what a Product Manager does, we get it. But you know what’s not that hard? Sharing this newsletter with your friends and colleagues!
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