Zepto CEO accuses rival CFO of smear campaign, cites rapid growth amid allegations
New Delhi: Aadit Palicha, the CEO and Co-founder of quick commerce platform Zepto, has accused the chief financial officer (CFO) of a rival company of orchestrating a smear campaign aimed at maligning Zepto’s reputation.
In a LinkedIn post, Palicha claimed that the alleged campaign involves “calling our investors to make wild allegations about us with no empirical evidence, giving out false numbers and Excel sheets on Zepto through sources known to journalists, and paying bots on social media to spread a negative narrative.” However, he did not disclose the name of the competing firm.
Zepto, which competes in the quick commerce space with players like Blinkit (owned by Eternal, formerly Zomato), Swiggy Instamart, Flipkart Minutes, and Tata BigBasket, has seen significant growth in recent months.
“Candidly, this episode is below the stature expected of the CFO of a high-quality company, and makes it obvious that they are starting to get nervous about how fast Zepto's EBITDA is improving,” Palicha stated.
Highlighting Zepto’s recent performance, Palicha said the company has grown from approximately ₹750 crore in monthly gross order value (GOV) in May 2024 to ₹2,400 crore in May 2025. He added that the company’s definition of GOV includes the selling price of fruits and vegetables as well as ad revenue.
Zepto’s EBITDA, according to Palicha, has improved by 20 absolute percentage points from January to May 2025, and is approaching single-digit territory. Additionally, the company’s cash burn has reportedly decreased by nearly 65% in the same period.
Palicha further mentioned that Zepto expects the majority of its dark stores to be fully EBITDA-positive — inclusive of backend supply chain, customer support, last mile, and other fixed/variable store costs — by the next quarter.
“As of the beginning of this quarter, we have approximately ₹7,445 crore of net cash in the bank, fully reconciled to bank statements. With our current cash burn trajectory, we have many years of runway,” he said.
Expressing disapproval of the alleged tactics, Palicha added, “I’m okay with healthy/aggressive competitive talk, but lies are not acceptable. Frankly, these calls from you are only making it clearer to the investor community that we are a strong competitor. It’s best for all of us to simply focus on execution.”
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
