Zepto Expands Employee Rewards with $170 Mn ESOPs, ₹700 Cr Loan Facility

Quick commerce unicorn Zepto has expanded its employee stock option (ESOP) pool by $170 million, taking the total value of its options to more than $500 million, according to a report published by Inc42.

The Bengaluru-based start-up has issued an additional 39.4 lakh stock options. With this, the overall ESOP count has reached 1.2 crore and the total valuation now stands at rough $527 million.

Notably, this is one of the largest ESOP pools among late-stage Indian start-ups, specifically in the consumer internet segment.

Besides ESOPs, the quick commerce giant has also approved an interest-free loan of ₹700 crore to its employee welfare trust, the report added. This will allow Zepto employees to exercise and purchase vested shares without significant upfront financial burden.

Zepto's Valuation Rise

Zepto has recently closed about $450 million of financing in a mix of primary and secondary transactions. The cash-heavy round the company says leaves it with roughly $900 million of net cash on the balance sheet and positions it “well-capitalised for the future.”

The $450m package reportedly includes both primary capital and secondary transactions; earlier reporting indicated a portion of the round was led by large institutional investors such as CalPERS, though Zepto’s public statement framed the closure as a mix of investor types.

The funding has been reported to value Zepto at about $7 billion, up from around $5 billion last year.

Zepto competes with the quick-commerce arms of larger platforms, Blinkit (Zomato), Swiggy Instamart and BigBasket, and continues to face pressure on unit economics despite its claims of store-level profitability.

Analysts note Zepto’s footprint remains concentrated in major cities (some reports put it in 80+ cities with over 1,000 dark stores) even as it pursues growth into smaller towns where order economics differ. The company has also been diversifying offerings (including a paused Zepto Café product in many locations) and iterating its app and merchandising to reduce complexity.

Zepto's Bet on Automation

Zepto is accelerating its automation efforts which also led to significant job cuts over the past six months. According to Inc42 reports, around 200 employees lost their jobs in the last month alone as a part of broader restructuring.

The laid-off employees were part of ground operations, customer support, invoice payments, Zepto Café, replenishment operations, among others. So far, over 500 employees have lost their jobs in the past six months.

“We are building a culture of cost excellence regardless of how large our balance sheet is. Over the past 6 months we have periodically built in-house software to automate operational work for cost excellence; most of these tasks are performed by off-roll staff (invoice processing, replenishment, real estate management etc.),” a Zepto spokesperson told Inc42.

These developments came at a time when Zepto has been showing signs of slowdown. Earlier this year, its food delivery arm, Zepto Cafe, closed 45–50 outlets, citing challenges with sourcing and a shortage of trained kitchen staff. Daily order volumes in the segment have dropped by half from their peak of 1 lakh, while marketing activity has largely tapered off.