New Delhi, Oct. 16 -- Quick-commerce startup Zepto said Thursday it has closed a new round worth $450 million (around Rs 3,960 crore) led by US-based pension fund California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS).

The round valued the startup at $7 billion, it said in a statement. This is a significant 40% uptick in valuation from the $5 billion it was valued at just last year.

The round was a mix of fresh capital infusion and secondary share transfers, "with a majority in primary", it said.

Zepto's existing investors General Catalyst, Avenir, Avra, Lightspeed, Glade Brook, The Stepstone Group and Nexus Venture Partners also joined the round.

The funding round comes ahead of a possible public listing next year.

Zepto has so far raised $3 billion, of which two-thirds has come in the last year and a half alone. Following the latest round, one of the biggest in the five-year-old company's short history, Zepto has around $900 million in cash.

"This financing is a reflection of our team's execution to grow the business rapidly while consistently building operating leverage. We now have approximately $900 million of net cash in bank and more than well-capitalised for the future," said Palicha, co-founder and CEO of Zepto.

Zepto, which was founded by Stanford University dropouts and childhood friends Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra in 2020, competes with the likes of Amazon India as well as local competitors like Eternal-owned Blinkit, Tata Group-owned BigBasket as well as Instamart, which is a part of the SoftBank-backed Swiggy.

In August this year, Zepto raised Rs 400 crore ($45.6 million) from Motilal Oswal Financial Services. The Mumbai-based company had also led Zepto's last major funding round in November 2024 when the startup raised $350 million.

In 2024, Zepto raised around $ 1 billion across multiple rounds, including the November 2024 round. These rounds saw participation from a bunch of family offices and investors including the Taparia Family Office and Mankind Family Office, among others.

In FY25 Zepto's revenue more than doubled to Rs 11,109 crore from Rs 4,454 crore in the previous year, when it had posted a net loss of almost Rs 1,250 crore.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.