Zepto, an Indian fast trading startup, said it has raised $400 million in a funding round led by a new investor, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), a US-based pension fund. The round, which is a combination of primary and secondary investment, also has participation from existing investors including Avenir, Avra, Lightspeed, Glade Brook, The Stepstone Group and Nexus Venture Partners. Following this financing, the company plans to go public next year.
Zepto competes with other fast commerce players such as Eternal’s BlinkIt (formerly Zomato), Swiggy Instamart and Tata-owned BigBasket, all part of listed companies. The startup has been on a funding spree, having raised $1.3 billion over a span of several months last year. Since Zepto’s latest funding round in November 2024, Swiggy made its public debut on the Indian stock exchange and Blinkit surpassed Zomato in gross order value (the total value of customer orders) by the first quarter of 2025.
The company also faces competition from traditional e-commerce players such as Flipkart and Amazon, which have started their own express commercial delivery services.
Startups are also looking at verticalized e-commerce offerings. Swish backed by Accel and Zing are operating in the food delivery space; Listed Nykaa, Myntra, Silkk and Flipkart-owned Blip want to deliver clothes to customers within an hour; Snabbit, powered by Lightspeed, allows users to book home services, such as cleaning, in 10 minutes; and startups like FirstClub are taking a curated approach to grocery delivery.
Zepto and CEO Aadit Palicha are confident in the startup’s growth. Palicha said the company has gone from 500,000 orders a day five quarters ago to 1.7 million orders a day and predicted growth will continue.
BlinkIt, Instamart and Zepto operate in many of these spaces, with food delivery being the most prominent. However, Zepto had to pause its Zepto Café offer in 44 cities due to staffing problems.
The signs for the fast trading market are encouraging in India. Morgan Stanley predicts the fast trading market could reach $42 billion by 2030. Bernstein said in a March note that it could reach $100 billion within a decade.
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Zepto has largely focused on major cities in India in terms of service expansion. JP Morgan noted earlier this month that BlinkIt has its network of dark warehouses to fulfill online orders in over 204 cities, compared to Swiggy Instamart in over 104 and Zepto in over 80 cities in India.
The investment is notable for CalPERS. The pension fund typically invests in venture capital through intermediary funds rather than leading direct investments in startups. CalPERS has been aggressively expanding its exposure to venture firms since 2022 after what officials called a “lost decade” of underperformance, scaling its venture allocation from about $800 million to a target of $5 billion. The fund’s decision to lead a round in an Indian fast-trading startup apparently indicates strong institutional confidence in India’s fast-delivery sector and perhaps also CalPERS’s growing appetite for direct venture investments in emerging markets. Notably, CalPERS also invests in funds from existing Zepto sponsors such as Lightspeed and General Catalyst.
