Zepto Cafe Hits 1 Lakh Orders Per Day Milestone: Aadit Palicha

Reiterating his belief in the potential of 10-minute food deliveries, quick commerce major Zepto’s cofounder and CEO Aadit Palicha claimed that Zepto Cafe has hit 1 Lakh orders per day. 

In a post on LinkedIn, the CEO said that Zepto Cafe is close to achieving $100 Mn annualised gross merchandise value (GMV) run-rate with a near 50% steady-state gross margin. 

Palicha claimed that Zepto Cafe’s steady-state gross margin is already 10% higher than the scale of some of the “top” QSR chains in India. For the uninitiated, steady-state gross margin is a company’s estimate of what its gross margin would be if it was not growing rapidly. 

“It has not been easy to get this business off the ground – the execution is highly complex and there were multiple do-or-die challenges along the way (many of which are still work in progress). Still, our team stuck to its guns because the customer love and long-term compounding retention we were seeing was worth it,” his post read.

The quick commerce unicorn launched a separate app for Zepto Cafe in December 2024, after about two years of being a part of Zepto’s main app. Back then, Palicha shared plans of  launching over a 100 cafes (which are the dark store equivalent cloud kitchens) a month. The startup also elevated senior VP Shashank Shekhar Sharma to the role of CXO of Zepto Cafe in December last year. 

Zepto Cafe was operational only in Mumbai from 2022 with a mix of branded and non-branded food items. In November last year, the unicorn announced the expansion of Zepto Cafe to 120 cities at a time when its competitors, Swiggy and Zomato, also began expanding their presence in the quick food and snack delivery segment.

While Zomato-owned Blinkit has launched Bistro for quick deliveries, Swiggy has launched SNACC. Besides, the two companies are also offering 10 to 15 minute deliveries under their food delivery segment.

The 10-minute food and snack delivery space has grown rapidly over the past year or so, and companies are banking on the segment to spruce up their top and bottom lines.

Swiggy said that its quick food delivery Bolt contributed about 9% of its food delivery revenue in the third quarter of the fiscal year 2024-25 (Q3 FY25). 

Over the past two months, Palicha has been routinely giving updates on Zepto Cafe’s growth. In January, the CEO claimed that Zepto Cafe had crossed 50,000 orders per day, registering a 60% month-on-month growth. “More importantly, customer retention is strong even as we’re scaling,” he said in a post on LinkedIn.