Subscribe for notification
Categories: Latest

At NDTV World Summit, Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha Shares Story Behind Dropping Out Of Stanford To Build Company

Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra were students at Stanford University, California, studying Computer Sciences when they dropped out of college and chose to build a ten-minute-delivery startup which is now valued at $5 billion. At the NDTV World Summit, Mr Palicha shared how Zepto was built and how his parents reacted to the decision to leave college.

“On the outside, it looks like a very cliched Silicon Valley story, you drop out of college to start a company, but before you took that step, Kaivalya and I were tinkering around for a year and as kids we love coding and we used to build small projects for fun. We were supposed to go to California but during the first wave of Covid, we were put back to Mumbai. I didn’t really see a value in online education in that period, so we took a call to take a year off and build something interesting,” Mr Palicha said.

“Most of our peers at Stanford were doing their internship at Google, and Goldman Sachs, we didn’t have anything of that lined up and we took a call to start experimenting,” he said. 

Read more: “People Ask Me Why Do You Still Work Like This…”: PM At NDTV World Summit

To a question on how he came up with the idea of quick delivery, the Zepto CEO said, “We were sitting in sher-e-punjab in Andheri East in Mumbai, and during the pandemic, you couldn’t get groceries delivered. Offline options were mostly shut and online would take seven days. We started with a WhatsApp group and over a year we kept talking to customers and tweaking the model.”

“We started building out the first version of Zepto a year after the WhatsApp group and got to a meaningful scale before we decided to drop out,” he said.

How Parents Reacted

“It was shocking for parents. I remember Kevaliya’s mother burst into tears and said what have you done to my son, you have brainwashed him…but we had real numbers to bank on. At that time we were doing a few million dollars in revenue and we were growing fast…We had the substance to decide with conviction…Our fathers were a little bit comfortable with it because they saw the numbers,” he said, adding, “Kaivalya’s mother often says what a beautiful life you have given up on.”

Read more: “India Has Credibility To Mediate In Ukraine War”: David Cameron At NDTV World Summit

Zepto competes in India’s hyper-competitive grocery delivery space. Rivals in the market include e-commerce giant Amazon’s India unit and homegrown competitors such as Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, and conglomerate Tata Group’s BigBasket.

This year, Aadit and Kaivalya were featured on the list of richest Indians released by Hurun. Twenty-one-year-old Kaivalya Vohra has a net worth of Rs 3,600 crore, while Aadit, 22, has a net worth of Rs 4,300 crore.

Recent Posts

“Truth Is…”: BJP Leader Slaps Case Against Rahul Gandhi In Cash-For-Vote Row

BJP National General Secretary Vinod Tawde - the ex-Maharashtra minister accused of a cash-for-votes scam…

1 hour ago

JKBOSE Class 11 Private and Bi-Annual Examinations Result 2024 Result Released, Details Inside

JKBOSE 11th Result 2024: The Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (JKBOSE) has released…

1 hour ago

UP Police Constable Result 2024: 26 Youths From A Single Village In Uttar Pradesh Crack Written Exam

In a remarkable feat, 26 candidates from a single village in Muzaffarnagar district have successfully…

1 hour ago

Royal Enfield Scram 440 Unveiled At Motoverse 2024; Check Changes

Royal Enfield has been rapidly expanding its line of products in the Indian market. To…

1 hour ago

Maharashtra Election Results: When And Where To Watch Election Results Live

Elections concluded in Maharashtra on Wednesday, November 20, and the results will be declared tomorrow,…

2 hours ago

Jharkhand Election Results: Date, Time And Where To Watch

Jharkhand Assembly election results will be announced on Saturday, November 23. Voting was held on…

2 hours ago