Kaivalya Vohra: The Standford dropout who took startup ecosystem by storm

In an interview with Business Standard, Kaivalya Vohra talks about dropping out from Stanford and starting his venture, the current startup scenario and the future of quick commerce in India

Recently, Kaivalya Vohra, the 19-year-old co-founder and CTO of grocery delivery startup Zepto, was in the news for making it to the richest Indians list released by the research firm Hurun India in partnership with the wealth management firm IIFL Wealth.

In an interview with Business Standard's Anjana Kumari, Vohra talks about dropping out from Stanford and starting his venture, the current startup scenario and the future of quick commerce in India.

Read the edited excerpts:

How did you conceive the idea of 10 minutes of groceries?

Our journey started during the Covid-19 pandemic. The interest in groceries as a space came from the first wave of the pandemic, where the online platforms had slots six-seven days away, and the people working at the local stores had gone back to their villages. We experienced that getting groceries on time was not easy.

It started as a curiosity as to why things are like this and then evolved into asking ourselves if there is anything we can do about it. From mid-2020 onwards, we tried to find a solution to this problem. This led to the launch of Zepto.

What motivated you to start your own business after dropping out of Stanford University?

Initially, we were taking some time off and knew that the university would be online, so we decided to take a gap year. By the time our gap year ended, we had already raised quite a lot of capital and were scaling beyond Mumbai. It was a no-brainer at that point if we would like to pursue our studies or scale up Zepto.

How did your family react to you dropping out of Stanford?

Convincing our parents was the most challenging part, but I was clear that this was the right call. Initially, they were sceptical of me not getting a degree. But they gave in as they witnessed the business growing well.

What do you think about the current startup ecosystem in India?

It's a very exciting time in India. We are the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world. The change has been commendable over the last 10–15 years. We are moving forward from providing services to building products. With the increasing middle-class population, we have started consuming much more. I am very sure that the next decade will be India's decade of rapid innovation.

How do you plan to combat competition from Blinkit, which Zomato recently acquired?

The quick commerce space is at a very early stage in India. Many players have tried to enter the space and have already left the market. The market leader in this space will be the player that can execute the best at multiple levels, be it quality, availability, an internal supply chain, or a good customer support system.

In the last couple of months, we have rapidly expanded our assortments and the number of categories. For example, Zepto Café is one segment we are scaling up.

You started Zepto in the middle of the pandemic when people were not so eager to go out, but now the situation is changing with everything opening up. How do you plan to continue with the momentum?

One thing is for sure, people's behaviour has fundamentally changed since Covid. When we started this out, nobody thought that 10-minute delivery would be a thing, and now we have reached a point where this is the fastest-growing space. There are multiple players, and millions of customers have started using the service. The consumer shift that happened during Covid in terms of ordering online is here to stay with the convenience that quick commerce brings in.

The safety of delivery executives has been a concern across quick-commerce delivery apps. How do you tackle the issue?

The safety concern of delivery executives is generally a misconception. People believe that quick commerce is faster because the delivery executives are asked to drive fast. More than anything else, quick commerce is built on the model of short distances. Our average distance from one of our delivery hubs to any customer is around 1.7 km, which is much lower than any hyper-local delivery player in the country. Most accidents happen mainly on highways and main roads. Given that our network of delivery hubs is set up in individual neighbourhoods and the people ordering are from the same neighbourhoods, the roads that our delivery partner drives on are mostly internal roads, which reduces the probability of accidents.

What's next for Zepto? Are you planning to enter India's tier 2 and tier 3 cities?

Our growth can be split into two parts: geographical expansion, like discovering more people and launching in more cities. Today, we are primarily in metro cities, and in the coming months, we will get deeper and deeper into the country. There is a lot of scope for quick commerce in India.

The second part would be more on the customer experience side in terms of launching new categories adjacent to groceries, be it kids' toys, cosmetics, or stationery, and expanding our assortments by leveraging our existing delivery network.