Athira Sethu
Kochi, 25 March 2025
Zepto, an online food delivery startup, is in talks to permit existing investors to offload up to $250 million shares. This reported move, according to Bloomberg, seeks to boost Indian investor ownership of the firm prior to going public sometime later this year or early next year.
The transaction won’t raise new funds for the firm, but will permit current employees and existing shareholders to trade shares for cash, the Bloomberg report said.
The private equity units of Motilal Oswal Financial Services and Edelweiss Financial Services are in negotiations with Zepto to buy shares in this secondary sale. That implies that the valuation of the company will still be around $5 billion, the same as it was during its latest round of funding towards the end of last year.
Zepto aims to increase the share held by Indian investors, which is only around 33% of the entire share holding of the company at present. Around 20% of the company is owned by founders Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, and Zepto aims to raise the overall shareholding of Indian investors to around 50%. This initiative comes as Zepto plans an initial public offering (IPO) in the near term.
Although secondary stock sales have traditionally been contentious because they are feared to enable employees to sell out ahead of an IPO, they are increasingly used. Secondary stock sales can reward employees, increase morale, and enable early investors to realize some gains before the company goes public.
Zepto is playing in the ultra competitive grocery delivery space in India, up against the likes of Amazon India, Swiggy, Zomato, and BigBasket. Zepto was started by Palicha and Vohra, who are childhood friends and Stanford University dropouts that started the venture in 2021, when they were mere teenagers. Today, Zepto has turned into one of the leading players in the Indian e-commerce space.
