Zepto cut its loss per order by ₹57 in a year. One of the savings may not last

Zepto spent ₹10.82 to win an order in early FY24 and ₹1.01 by FY26, and its loss per order fell to ₹79. The filing shows which gains look solid and which could reverse.

15 Oct 2026 · 5 min read

Zepto cut its loss per order by ₹57 in a year. One of the savings may not last

In early FY24, one delivery company spent ₹10.82 on digital marketing for every order it delivered. By the last quarter of FY26, it spent ₹1.01.

That is a drop of about 90 percent in the cost of finding a customer. Over the same stretch, the company's dark store count more than tripled and its revenue grew roughly fivefold. And on each order, it still lost about ₹79.

The company is Zepto, the Bengaluru quick-commerce firm. Its revenue from operations rose from ₹4,454.52 crore in FY24 to ₹22,623.58 crore in FY26. The updated draft prospectus also shows a net loss of ₹5,905.19 crore for FY26.

The filing is unusually detailed. A handful of per-order numbers show what got cheaper, what did not, and why public investors hesitated.

The loss per order, and the ₹57 swing

The cleanest way to read a delivery business is to shrink it down to one order. Zepto's adjusted EBITDA loss per order first worsened from ₹84.64 in FY24 to ₹136.15 in FY25. Indmoney's reading is that the company opened many new dark stores before enough demand had built up around them.

The loss then fell sharply to ₹78.75 in FY26. That is roughly ₹57 saved on every order in a year.

The company attributes this mainly to operating leverage, shorter delivery distances from its densification strategy, and stronger in-house technology. The fixed-cost line backs this up. Fixed cost per order dropped from ₹80.72 in Q1 FY24 to ₹52.34 in Q4 FY26.

One outside analysis adds a caveat. Amquest Education argues that much of the recent improvement came from a deep cut in digital marketing spend just before the IPO, a lever that may be hard to keep pulling as Amazon and Flipkart push into the category. The ₹1.01 figure is real, but it is the kind of number that can drift back up when rivals bid for the same customers.

How a tighter map pays for itself

Zepto calls its core mechanism densification. Instead of spreading stores thinly across a city, it clusters several dark stores inside high-demand neighbourhoods, which shortens each trip and lets riders finish more orders per hour.

The scale of the build-out is large. The dark store network grew from 337 in FY24 to 1,139 in FY26. The payoff is in how busy each store gets, because rent, software and staff are fixed. Orders per day per store rose from 1,325 to 1,677 over FY24 to FY26. By Q4 FY26 the figure was 2,140, according to one analysis of the filing. Two reviews of the filing give slightly different figures for the same metric depending on the period they use, so treat the exact value as approximate.

There is also a second revenue stream riding on top of the same orders. Advertising revenue grew from ₹49 crore to ₹1,636 crore in two years, which one analyst calls the highest-quality revenue because it adds no delivery cost. Brands pay to be seen on an app that already has the customer.

The metric that slipped

A flywheel should show up in the data as a straight line. The filing shows something messier.

Average distance per order was 2.05 km in FY24. It improved to 1.73 km in FY25, then rose to 1.78 km in FY26 and 1.83 km in Q4 FY26. Median delivery time went from 11.47 minutes in FY24 to 10.57 in FY25, then up to 11.40 in FY26 and 12.35 in Q4 FY26, according to Trade Brains.

Cost per delivery tells a similar story. BigGo Finance's read of the filing puts average delivery cost per order at ₹42.05 in FY24 and ₹45.74 in early FY26. Other analysts use a different definition of last-mile cost, so the exact rupee figure depends on which line you pick. The direction is the point. Tripling the store count did not by itself make each delivery cheaper.

The savings came mostly from spreading fixed costs across more orders, not from shorter rides. That is a weaker kind of efficiency, because it depends on demand continuing to grow. New gig-worker rules, if they add welfare contributions or higher rider payouts, could raise delivery costs while Zepto is trying to reduce losses.

What the market did with it

In October 2025, Zepto raised $450 million in a round led by CalPERS and co-led by General Catalyst, at a $7 billion valuation. Public investors saw the same filing and responded differently.

According to Business Standard, investors grew cautious over valuation amid concerns about profitability, limited cash reserves and tougher competition. On July 31, co-founder Aadit Palicha told employees the delay was a pause of one to two quarters. The company planned to raise about ₹1,000 crore in a pre-IPO round from existing investors. Palicha said Zepto has until November 2027 to list without refiling its papers.

Reports differ on how far below $7 billion the bids landed. StartupFeed says fund managers priced it between $2.5 billion and $3 billion. Techpillow cites a range of $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion. Neither is a company disclosure, so treat the exact discount as unconfirmed.

What founders can take from it

Track the loss on one order before you track the size of the business. Zepto's total losses grew while its per-order loss fell, and the second number is the one that tells you whether scale will ever help.

Know which improvements you earned and which you bought. A fall in acquisition cost from ₹10.82 to ₹1.01 is only durable if it comes from repeat customers and brand pull. If it comes from turning off ads, a competitor can undo it. The opposite case, a company that nearly quadrupled its ad spend and still turned a profit, is covered in Kuku's FY26 numbers.

Report the metrics that can reverse. Distance and delivery time moved the wrong way in the filing, and analysts found them within weeks. If your model depends on a flywheel, plot every part of it, not just the parts that are turning.

Finally, treat a private valuation as a mark from people who share your optimism. Public buyers will ask what each unit earns today, so build the answer before you file.

Sources

Drafted with AI assistance from public reporting and company announcements. How we work · Report a correction