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Aadit Palicha is an Indian entrepreneur who is known for co-founding the online grocery store Zepto, along with his childhood friend Kaivalya Vohra. Zepto became India’s fastest-growing e-grocery company within months of its incorporation in 2021.
Wiki/Biography
Aadit Palicha was born in 2001 (age 23 years; as of 2023) in Mumbai, India.
A childhood picture of Aadit Palicha
Later, his family moved to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where Aadit spent most of his childhood. He would visit his relatives in Mumbai during the vacations. He pursued an IB Diploma, Mathematics and Computer Science at GEMS Modern Academy, Dubai from where he graduated as valedictorian. He was also the deputy head boy of GMA. He actively participated in extracurricular activities and was a national-level debater during his school days. An extraordinary student, he achieved the highest point score possible of 45 in the IDBP Diploma in UAE. He went to Stanford University in the US to study computer engineering, but he quit the programme in the middle to launch his firm.
Physical Appearance
Height (approx.): 5′ 11″
Hair Colour: Black
Eye Colour: Black
Family
His father belongs to a Gujarati family, and his mother hails from Mumbai.
Parents & Siblings
His father, Kavit Palicha, is an engineer and stakeholder in Zepto. His mother, Urvashi Palicha, is the Chief Executive Officer of Search Point, an Executive Recruitment firm in the Middle East that exclusively specialises in the search, selection and placement of Finance, Technology and Banking professionals. Aadit Palicha has a younger brother, Ishaan.
A picture of Aadit Palicha’s parents, Kavit Palicha and Urvashi Palicha
Aadit Palicha with his mother
A childhood picture of Aadit Palicha with his younger brother
Wife & Children
He is unmarried.
Career
Aadit became friends with Kaivalya when he was nine years old. Both were originally from Mumbai and studied in the same school in Dubai. In May 2018, Aadit and Kaivalya founded a mobile application called GoPool that helped parents find and schedule carpools to school in Dubai. The GoPool App got a grant of Dh53,550 from Emirates NBD to be developed professionally. In an interview, Aadit revealed that the idea to develop a carpool application first came to his mind when he was 15 and got stuck in traffic while going to pick up his younger brother, Ishaan, from school.
An image of Aadit Palicha when he was a student at Gems Modern Academy introducing his newly launched car pool app to his principal Nargish Khambatta in September 2019
The project rooted for sustainability, going green, reducing carbon footprint and also providing a welcome cutback on the fossil fuel bills of parents in Dubai, who preferred using their own transport instead of using school buses. From July 2019 to March 2020, he worked as the Project Lead at PryvaSee, an AI project that summarized privacy policies. Thereafter, Aadit and Kaivalya enrolled at Stanford University in the US to study computer engineering. The two moved back to Mumbai in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While they were quarantined away from their families, they faced difficulty in buying groceries online as it would take 6-7 days to deliver. They identified the problem and started the app KiranaKart, a model for instant grocery delivery in Mumbai in June 2020. However, as they couldn’t find a strong product-market fit with the company, they shut down operations in Mar 2021 to start Zepto. In April 2021, Aadit and Kaivalya founded the online grocery store Zepto in Mumbai.
Co-founders of Zepto, Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra
Amid the Corona crisis, the idea of delivering groceries in just 10 minutes turned out to be a big hit and led the startup’s valuation to reach $200 million in just one month of operation. In 2021, the company delivered 10 lakh orders while working with 86 grocery businesses. The company’s valuation reached $570 million within 5 months of its introduction. The app has funding from investors like Y Combinator and Glade Brook Capital. Zepto is also backed by Nexus Venture, Global Founders and Silicon Valley angel investors Lachy Groom and Neeraj Arora. Despite being introduced just in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Zepto’s valuation surpassed Rs 7,300 crore in 2022. The company went from nonexistence to a multi-crore valuation within a short span of months. Later, the business grew into various big cities like Delhi, Chennai, Gurgaon, Bangalore, and Mumbai.
Net Worth
Aadit Palicha had a net worth of about Rs 1,200 crore as per the 2022 IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List.
Facts/Trivia
- Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra were named to the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2022. Vohra, 19, and Palicha, 20, were the youngest start-up founders in the Hurun India Future Unicorn Index 2022.
- In the same year, Palicha and Vohra were featured in Forbes magazine’s influential “30 under 30 (Asia list)” in the e-commerce category.
- In an interview, he revealed that “Zepto” was a name derived from the smallest time unit ever measured Zeptosecond.
- His family and friends fondly call him Aditya.