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Until such a time a HBS Case Study on Zepto is wrought, here's a bunch of MBA speak which may answer this: 1. There's always room for more companies than one may think. Oft times, the markets are too huge for a single player to dominate. 2. Addressing an adjacent market is a great way to take on the incumbents, who may or may not be able to match your unique innovation. This has the dual advantage of upending existing market and unlocking a bigger one, in tandem. 3. VCs may invest in promising companies competing against bets they missed out on. Besides FOMO, VCs also tend to value growth. Demonstrate an appetite for that, and with the right amount of luck and momentum, everything tends to fall in place. --- Regarding Zepto (aka KiranaKart), I have no inside knowledge, but their key selling point is they've figured out a way to deliver groceries in 10mins (!) with a sustainable business model in the 6 months they've been stealthily operating in Mumbai, the most dense, expensive, and biggest metropolis in India. In short, they've demonstrated the ability to create, deliver, and harness their innovation. Now it is all about doing so in a repeatable (sales), scalable (markets), valuable (moat), and predictable (revenue) manner. |
I dunno man, smells fishy. I never understood how the whole 10mins delivery thing could work economically, much less in a place with low purchasing power like India. Or maybe its just a sign that wealth inequality is rife in Mumbai such that people are willing to pay enough of a premium to cover low cost labor that makes it profitable. Maybe thats also why I'm not a billionaire yet.