‘It started as a WhatsApp group…’ Aadit Palicha on Zepto’s origin story

In the frenetic lanes of Mumbai, where time is a currency as precious as cash, a 19-year-old dropout from Stanford had a wild idea: deliver groceries in 10 minutes flat. It was 2021, and Aadit Palicha, alongside his childhood friend Kaivalya Vohra, launched Zepto, a startup that would soon become India’s fastest-growing unicorn, valued at $5 billion by late 2024. “It started as a WhatsApp group where we were delivering groceries to our neighbours because that was a nightmare during the first wave of the pandemic,” Aadit Palicha said in an interview with Y Combinator.