Zepto co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha on Tuesday called out Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal for making an "inaccurate statement" against his company.?
Referring to an article published by the Economic Times, in which Goyal stated that Zepto was losing a major chunk of Rs 2,500 crore per quarter.
According to Goyal's statement in ET, they think the total burn for all companies in quick commerce is around Rs 5,000 crore each quarter, of which 'substantially more than half of this is by Zepto.
According to the publication, Goyal said that Zepto is making more loss as compared to Blinkit per quarter.
He said that the total burn for all companies in quick commerce is around Rs 5,000 crore per quarter, which is more than half of this by Zepto, and compared to this, Blinkit is burning very low numbers.?
In the previous quarter, Blinkit burned around Rs 35 crore per month on average, Goyal quoted in the article. Following this, the Zepto CEO issued a statement on his LinkedIn.?
As soon as the article surfaced on the internet, Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha quickly took to his LinkedIn account and shared a post saying, "This statement is verifiably untrue, and it will be clear when we publicly file our financial statements."
He also clarified that there were no hard feelings between the two leaders, and he was certain that Goyal had good intentions when he made that comment.?
'Deepinder started Zomato when I was five years old'
He further noted in his statement, "I know Deepinder, and I know he has only good intentions; this quote could have been taken out of context or said as an honest mistake.”
Palicha went on to state in the post that Deepinder started Zomato when he was five years old, and now he has become a role model for the rest of the Indian startup industry. "I have personally read all of his blogs, and it's a privilege to learn from and compete with Zomato," he added.?
The post shared by Palicha garnered massive reactions on LinkedIn, and one user wrote, "Quick commerce delivery can never be profitable no matter what you do. You can only reduce the amount of cash you burn every quarter, but it's impossible to turn profitable in this sector."
While another mentioned that Palicha handled the situation quite well and maturely. "These days some founders & leaders are beaming with a lot of ego & regular back & forth unnecessary heated conversation. They all must learn from this 22-year-old who I am sure will achieve more successes given his humble & graceful attitude. Please remain the same."?
"The beauty about PR comments is that you can deny someone's statement as inaccurate even if you are burning 2499 crores per quarter," another added.?
While someone commented on the five-year-old statement saying, "Love this: Deepinder started Zomato when I was 5 years old"