Zepto CEO accuses rival company CFO of smear campaign; says, 'They're nervous about how fast our EBITDA is improving'

Quick commerce major Zepto co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha has accused the chief financial officer of a rival quick commerce company of attempting to orchestrate a smear campaign against his company. In a detailed LinkedIn post, Palicha alleged that the rival CFO has been reaching out to investors with unfounded claims, distributing inaccurate financial data, and using bots on social media to spread misinformation.

"...This includes calling our investors to make wild allegations about us with no empirical evidence, giving out false numbers/Excel sheets on Zepto through sources known to journalists, and paying bots on social media to spread a negative narrative," Palicha wrote.

"Candidly, this episode is below the stature expected of the CFO of a high-quality company, and makes it obvious that they are starting to get nervous about how fast Zepto's EBITDA is improving."

Palicha outlined key performance highlights to back his claims. He said that Zepto has grown from Rs 750 crore in gross order value (GOV) per month in May 2024 to Rs 2,400 crore by May 2025. EBITDA has improved by 2,000 basis points since January, with overall cash burn down by nearly 65% over the same period.

"At the same time, even as our EBITDA improved sharply from January 2025 to May 2025, we have still grown roughly 20% in GOV in that period. That represents an average 4% to 5% month-on-month growth," he wrote.

He said that the majority of Zepto’s dark stores are expected to become fully EBITDA-positive in the next quarter. "We also expect our overall company EBITDA and Operating Cash Flow to be within a few hundred basis points of breakeven in this same period."

Zepto, Palicha said, has over Rs 7,445 crore in net cash and many years of runway left. Addressing speculation, Palicha clarified that Zepto is not downsizing stores but instead ramping up new launches.

"My hope is this CFO in question stops this activity. I'm okay with healthy/aggressive competitive talk, but lies are not acceptable. Frankly, these calls from you are only making it clearer to the investor community that we are a strong competitor. It's best for all of us to simply focus on execution," he added.