Indian online grocer Zepto is reportedly in talks on a secondary sale that would allow employees and some existing investors to sell as much as $250 million worth of shares.
The proposed secondary sale would value the company at the same level as a funding round held late last year, just over $5 billion, Bloomberg reported Monday (March 24), citing unnamed sources.
Zepto did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.
A secondary sale won’t raise any money for the company but will allow some existing investors to cash in and will enable Zepto to raise the ownership of Indian investors from the current 33% to about 50%, according to the Bloomberg report.
Zepto is expected to launch an initial public offering (IPO) later this year or early next year, per the report.
The grocery startup was founded in 2021 by two Stanford dropouts, both 19 years old at the time, and benefited from investor interest in a sector where companies were winning customers over with faster deliveries, PYMNTS reported in 2022.
Zepto is part of a busy sector in India that came to expect 10-minute deliveries. When the company formed a partnership that allowed its customers to choose any mode of payment, it said that would speed transactions.
It was reported in December that India — the world’s most populous country — is one of the most attractive countries for eCommerce investors.
With India’s population only beginning to embrace the digital space, billions of people are getting their first computer.
At that point, the stock of Zomato — a competitor of Zepto — was up 128% in 2024.
“One of the reasons Zomato has done so well this year is because the quick commerce business blanket has exceeded expectations,” EMQQ Global Founder Kevin Carter told CNBC in December. “It now looks like it’s going to be the biggest business at Zomato.”
Swiggy, another food delivery giant competing with Zepto, raised 113.27 billion Indian rupees (about $1.34 billion) in an IPO that closed in November.
It was reported at the time that the quick commerce industry in India had seen rapid adoption but still had “exponential” opportunity for growth.
