Zepto's $1-billion initial public offering (IPO) comes at a time when the quick commerce sector is entering another investment cycle, with incumbents and new entrants continuing to spend on expansion and customer acquisition.
While the company trails just Blinkit in order volumes, analysts and industry executives said its low-price strategy has come at the cost of monetisation.
Zepto reported the highest operating losses among the top three quick commerce players in FY26, even as its unit economics improved. Analysts said that its model requires significantly greater scale for its unit economics to work. As a result, analysts and institutional investors said the focus of the IPO is likely to be on the pace at which the company can improve monetisation while maintaining growth.
According to the company's draft red herring prospectus (DRHP), Zepto processed 640 million orders in FY26, behind Blinkit's 917 million and ahead of Swiggy Instamart's 412 million.
The company operated 1,139 dark stores across 66 cities as of March 2026 and handled about 1.8 million orders a day.
Its annual transacting user base stood at 48 million. While Zepto accounted for about 35% of order volumes among the top three players, its share of net order value was lower because of its smaller basket sizes.
Brokerage firm Jefferies estimates Zepto’s average order value at around Rs 357, compared with Rs 530 for Blinkit and Rs 490 for Instamart. Analysts attributed the gap to Zepto's everyday-low-price strategy, which prioritises frequency and affordability.
The company reported an adjusted Ebitda loss of about Rs 5,000 crore in FY26, compared with losses of Rs 3,500 crore at Instamart and Rs 277 crore at Blinkit.
On a per-order basis, however, losses narrowed to Rs 79 in FY26 from Rs 136 a year earlier, reflecting improvements in supply chain efficiency and lower marketing costs.
