Zepto raises $200 million, becomes first unicorn of 2023

Online grocery delivery startup Zepto has ended the country's 11-month-old Unicorn drought. Zepto is the first startup to attain Unicorn status in the year 2023.In a statement, the company said that it has raised $200 million at a valuation of $1.4 billion. A Unicorn is a startup that surpasses $1 billion in valuation. Post the current round, Zepto has become India's 84th Unicorn.

Zepto was valued at $900 million in May 2022 after a fundraise. The online grocery delivery startup runs a network of cloud stores or micro-warehouses.The Mumbai-based startup provides the home delivery of groceries and essentials within "a few minutes" from those cloud stores. Zepto founders include Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, who dropped out of Stanford to return to India and build the startup when they were teenagers. Zepto was founded in the year 2021. The company claims to have more than 220 so-called dark stores, or neighborhood warehouses, across cities including Mumbai, Bangalore and New Delhi.

Existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Glade Brook Capital and Lachy Groom also participated in the latest funding round, which valued Zepto at $ 1.4 billion. Avendus was the financial advisor to the company for the transaction. Before this, Zepto had raised around $ 360 million in total across multiple funding rounds since its inception. The company had managed to raise $ 200 million in its Series D funding round led by American technology startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund.