Quick commerce, a bug that has gone viral
Forbes India Editor Suveen Sinha on how Zepto founders Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra ditched Stanford to disrupt the q-comm space
By
Last Updated: Oct 07, 2025, 13:05 IST2 min
Advertisement
After finishing college in the United States, in 2007, Kunal Bahl joined Microsoft. That year there were, as usual, tens of thousands of applicants for the H-1B visa—the temporary (non-immigrant) category that allows employers to get foreign professionals to work for them in the US. Microsoft’s application to get one for Bahl was rejected. He was told to pack his bags.
Advertisement
In later years, Bahl began to think of that heartbreak as a blessing. Back in India, he went on to set up Snapdeal, which, for a length of time, was locked toe-to-toe with Flipkart for dominating India’s fledgling ecommerce segment.
Meanwhile, Bahl retains his “blessing” point of view in the aftermath of the recent H-1B visa fee hike by US President Donald Trump’s administration. On X, the microblogging site, he said a large number of talented people will head back to India and the talent density in the country will skyrocket.
Years after Bahl’s H-1B ‘blessing’, Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra first deferred admission and eventually opted out of their computer science course at Stanford University in California. As the pandemic raged, the duo went door to door in Bandra, the Mumbai suburb, delivering orders received on WhatsApp. In the beginning, theirs was a delivery service. Palicha and Vohra would pick the items from kirana stores and deliver them.
Advertisement
Palicha is particular to point out that his and Vohra’s was “not a crazy decision” to drop out on a whim. They deferred admission to verify that there was indeed a product-market fit (PMF). By the time they decided to quit college, the PMF was already established. The decision to drop out came when there was “already a pretty good thing going” with their business. That made it a thought-out decision.
Read More
During the process to find the PMF, most orders would take 45 to 60 minutes to deliver. But some, where the customer was close to the store, were done in 10 to 15 minutes. These customers ordered more frequently, which made Palicha and Vohra believe that speed of delivery was the Holy Grail. But, to become faster, the model had to change.
This led them to create dark stores—small warehouses that are not open to the public and which only fulfil online orders from nearby consumers. And these have become central to spreading the bug of quick commerce that has infected consumers. In the years since the pandemic receded, dark stores have mushroomed. Estimates say the three leading quick commerce outfits in the country run more than a thousand dark stores each, with Blinkit having 1,500 or so.
Advertisement
The spread of quick commerce appears to be logical in a country where, as Naini Thaker points out in our cover package, 80 percent of household spending happens within a 3-km radius. But it is not just about the distance. There is also cheap labour, which is instrumental in keeping costs under check. There is also the service mindset India has had, in addition to its tradition of trading established over centuries. The emergence of dense residential pockets, especially in the big cities, makes it possible to have a tremendous customer base within a small radius.
Fact is, most households were anyway accustomed to ordering grocery and other items of daily use over the phone and getting them delivered. Now, a percentage of it has shifted to apps, and payments are digital. And yes, the deliveries are far quicker.
Meanwhile, there is a personal triumph for Palicha. Initially, he says, Vohra’s mother was unhappy with him. She thought he had led her son astray. But she is ok now.
Advertisement
Suveen SinhaEditor, Forbes IndiaEmail: suveen.sinha@nw18.comX ID: @suveensinha
First Published: Oct 07, 2025, 13:03
Subscribe NowSuveen Sinha is the editor of Forbes India
Advertisement