Zepto's Aadit Palicha accuses 'rival q-commerce CFO' of smear campaign

Zepto's Aadit Palicha claims a rival CFO is running a smear campaign to undermine its rapid Ebitda gains and aggressive dark store expansion

Zepto co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha has publicly alleged that the chief financial officer (CFO) of a competing quick commerce firm is orchestrating a smear campaign targeting Zepto’s business, brand, and leadership. Palicha made the claims in a LinkedIn post on Sunday night.

 

Without naming the rival CFO or company, Palicha alleged that the CFO had contacted Zepto’s investors to spread false allegations, shared misleading internal data through media intermediaries, and even used paid social media bots to tarnish the firm’s image.

 

“Candidly, this episode is below the stature expected of the CFO of a high-quality company,” Palicha wrote. “It makes it obvious that they are starting to get nervous about how fast Zepto's Ebitda is improving.” 

 

 

Zepto counters with performance metrics

In his post, Palicha shared key performance figures to counter the alleged misinformation:

 

Growth in gross order value (GOV): Zepto’s monthly GOV surged to ₹2,400 crore in May 2025 from ₹750 crore in May 2024.

 

Ebitda improvement: The firm’s Ebitda margin improved by 20 percentage points between January and May 2025, alongside a 65 per cent drop in cash burn.

 

Sustainable growth: Despite the focus on profitability, Zepto maintained around 20 per cent GOV growth over the same period, with 4-5 per cent monthly growth.

 

Financial health: Zepto claims to have ₹7,445 crore in net cash reserves and expects to reach near-breakeven Ebitda and operating cash flow next quarter.

 

Operational expansion: Contrary to speculation, Zepto is scaling up its dark store network, not downsizing it. The firm currently operates close to 1,000 dark stores.

 

Palicha emphasised the company’s strong finance and audit practices, including Big 4 statutory audits and rigorous due diligence with no material concerns flagged.

 

"We have an excellent finance and controllership team with best-in-class H2H payment practices, vendor reconciliations, asset verification activities, internal audit systems and a rigorous Big 4 statutory audit record and Financial Due Diligence record with no material qualifications or variations," Palicha wrote. 

 

Eternals, Swiggy question Zepto's financials

Zepto, currently valued at $5 billion, has emerged as the second-largest player in the quick commerce sector, overtaking Swiggy Instamart but trailing Blinkit. However, rivals have raised questions about data transparency.

 

Earlier this year, Eternal (formerly Zomato) CEO Deepinder Goyal accused the quick commerce sector of collectively burning ₹5,000 crore per quarter, claiming Zepto accounted for “substantially more than half” of that figure. The comment sparked a heated debate around the company’s financial discipline.

 

Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety also recently expressed doubts about Zepto’s reported figures, noting that Zepto does not disclose Net Order Value (NOV), a metric that Swiggy and Eternal have adopted to provide a more accurate reflection of consumer spend.

 

Zepto also considers platforms, including Flipkart Minutes and Tata BigBasket, as rivals.

 

“I'm okay with healthy/aggressive competitive talk, but lies are not acceptable. Frankly, these calls from you are only making it clearer to the investor community that we are a strong competitor,” Palicha said, concluding his post, appealing for more professionalism among rivals.