Zepto CEO claims rival CFO behind smear campaign
Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha said the company has tripled its GOV since last May and cut cash burn by 65% this year, countering a smear campaign.
Zepto co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha has alleged a rival CFO in the quick commerce space of orchestrating a smear campaign targeting the company's growth trajectory and its purported high cash burn strategy.
"This includes calling our investors to make wild allegations about us with no empirical evidence, giving out false numbers/Excel sheets on Zepto through sources known to journalists, and paying bots on social media to spread a negative narrative," shared Palicha in a LinkedIn post.
Palicha clarified that Zepto's Gross Order Value (GOV) per month grew to Rs 2,400 crore in May 2025, as compared to Rs 750 crore in May 2024. It takes sale of fruits and vegetables at their selling price, along with advertising revenues as a part of its GOV.
Palicha claimed that Zepto's EBITDA has improved by 20 percentage points since the beginning of the year, and is on track to reach single-digit territory. The company also managed to reduce its cash burn by about 65% during the same period, he said. Zepto claims it has grown 20% in GOV from January to May this year.
In terms of profitability, Palicha expects that the majority of Zepto's dark stores will be fully EBITDA positive by next quarter. He also expects the company's overall EBITDA profitability and operating cash flow to be within a few hundred basis points of breakeven by the September quarter.
'As of the beginning of this quarter, we have approximately Rs 7,445 crore in net cash in the bank (fully reconciled to bank statements). With our current cash burn trajectory, we have many years of runway," added Palicha in the post.
Zepto is not planning large-scale rationalisation of stores but is looking to ramp-up. These clarifications come a day after the company temporarily put on hold 44 newly-opened Zepto cafes due to supply chain constraint.
According to a report by Moneycontrol, the company's high wage bill has drawn scrutiny within the sector, after it paid Rs 95 crore in salaries to its 3,000 employees in April.
Edited by Megha Reddy
