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Mumbai, April 21: Aadit Palicha, co-founder and CEO of Zepto, has showered praise on India’s deep reservoir of tech talent, calling it a major advantage for building a startup in the country. In a recent conversation with Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan on the How To Build The Future podcast, Palicha reflected on Zepto’s early days, India’s startup ecosystem, and the evolving quick commerce landscape.
Palicha, along with co-founder Kaivalya Vohra, dropped out of Stanford’s computer science program to launch Zepto in 2021. What began as a simple idea exchanged over WhatsApp has now grown into one of India’s most prominent grocery delivery platforms, boasting a team of over 3,000 corporate employees.
India’s Talent Pool: A Key Asset
Discussing the pros of launching a startup in India, Palicha emphasized the exceptional quality of Indian engineers. “The talent here is incredible,” he noted. “We interviewed American engineers — and they were outstanding — but we quickly realized the engineers we had in India were just as good, if not better.”
He further highlighted that many global internet companies have opened offices in Bangalore for this very reason. “It’s still a lot less competitive to hire high-quality talent here than in places like San Francisco,” he added.
Success Still a Work in Progress
Despite Zepto’s meteoric rise, Palicha remains grounded. When asked if Zepto can already be considered a success, he humbly replied, “No, absolutely not. Not even close. I think we have a couple of decades ahead of us before we can realistically say we’ve won.”
