Zepto lays off 300 employees as ceo aadit palicha warns of frugality.

ZEPTO LAYS OFF 300 EMPLOYEES

• Around 300 employees have been laid off from the company’s payroll to reduce costs amid an intensifying competitive landscape.
• This comes after Zepto raised $450 million in a fresh round, valuing the company at $7 billion, 40 per cent higher than its $5 billion valuation last year.
• “These 300 employees have been removed from Zepto’s payroll and have been placed with third-party service providers who work with Zepto and othes,” a source said.
• This has been done to reduce employee costs on a month-on-month basis, without impacting productivity.

WHAT DID ZEPTO SAY ABOUT THESE LAY-OFFS?

• “We are building a culture of cost excellence regardless of how large our balance sheet is. Over the past 6 months we have periodically built in-house software to automate operational work for cost excellence; most of these tasks are performed by off-roll staff (invoice processing, replenishment, real estate management, etc.),” a Zepto spokesperson said.
• These were employees across operations, tech, category management, finance, and other departments.
• The spokesperson said, “A total of 1,000 Zepto employees have been asked to go since the beginning of the year as the company automated its workflow.”
• The spokesperson added, “A bulk of these people were from the customer support team which is being automated to a great extent.”
• In an employee town hall on October 17, Aadit Palicha, co-founder and CEO, Zepto, told employees the company will “obsess over costs” and Zepto is “going to be very frugal”.
• “We’re going to cut our Amazon Web Services (AWS) spends, we’ll also cut all our software spends, build dashboards in-house instead of doing third parties,” Palicha told employees.
• “Apart from these, Zepto is also going to be very tight on hiring. The company is going to try and double the business with the same headcount. We don’t want to hire more unless very necessary,” Aadit Palicha said.
• Quick commerce firm Zepto competes with Blinkit and Instamart in the fast-growing market of the country. The entry of newer players from big brands such as Amazon and Flipkart Minutes has further intensified the competition.

Editor’s Note

• Zepto’s decision to cut 300 jobs — despite soaring to a $7 billion valuation — captures a defining paradox of India’s startup ecosystem: growth at all costs has given way to survival through efficiency. In an era where automation replaces manpower and “cost excellence” becomes culture, even high-flying unicorns are forced to reckon with the hard truth — sustainability now trumps scale. Aadit Palicha’s pledge to “be very frugal” signals not just a fiscal pivot but a mindset shift sweeping across the new-age economy, where leaner operations are the new badge of leadership.
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