Zepto Pass: A Membership Strategy for Customer Retention in Indian Quick Commerce

Industry & Competitive Context

India's quick-commerce sector defined by grocery and essentials delivery typically completed within 10 to 20 minutes grew rapidly through 2023 and 2024. Industry analysis from Redseer, cited across multiple financial publications, placed the sector's gross merchandise value (GMV) at $6–7 billion in 2024, with market consensus (including Morgan Stanley) projecting compound annual growth of roughly 40% through 2030. Reuters reported in January 2026, citing data from Datum Intelligence, that Blinkit (owned by Eternal, formerly Zomato) held a 46–48% share of India's quick-commerce market in 2025, ahead of Swiggy Instamart at approximately 24% and Zepto at approximately 22% (webbytemplate.com and startupfeed.in, both citing the same Reuters/Datum Intelligence figures). Other secondary trackers, including CLSA's "App-racadabra" report cited by Medianama, placed Zepto's share closer to 28–29% during 2024, indicating some erosion in Zepto's relative position as Blinkit's lead widened through 2025.

The market is structurally a three-way contest among Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, and Zepto, which together account for the large majority of category volume, with newer entrants Flipkart Minutes (Walmart-backed) and Amazon Now beginning to scale from 2024–2025 onward (startupfeed.in). Zepto itself was founded in July 2021 (originally as KiranaKart) by Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, and is headquartered in India (Wikipedia, "Zepto (company)"). By August 2024 the company was valued at over $5 billion and operated more than 250 dark stores across roughly ten metropolitan areas (Wikipedia, citing contemporaneous reporting). This is the competitive backdrop against which Zepto introduced its "Zepto Pass" membership program in February 2024.

Brand Situation Prior to Campaign

Prior to the February 2024 launch of Zepto Pass, Zepto was a fast-growing but heavily loss-making challenger in a capital-intensive category. According to reporting citing Zepto's financial filings, the company's revenue grew roughly 14-fold from Rs 142.36 crore in FY22 to Rs 2,024 crore in FY23, while losses increased more than three-fold over the same period, from Rs 390 crore in FY22 to Rs 1,272 crore in FY23 (Indian Startup News, citing Zepto's FY23 filings). Trade coverage at the time of the Zepto Pass launch explicitly linked the initiative to Zepto's broader ambition of an initial public offering (IPO) "by early 2025" (Indian Startup News, February 2024) indicating that the membership program was conceived, at least in part, as a lever toward the retention and engagement metrics relevant to a public-market narrative, rather than purely as a standalone loyalty initiative.

Coverage of the launch also notes that Zepto Pass was not the first such program in the category: BW Retail World's coverage states that "Zepto became the second rapid commerce company to provide subscription advantages with 'Pass', following Swiggy Instamart" indicating that Zepto's membership program was, at least in part, a competitive response to an already-established subscription mechanism used by a rival platform, rather than a category-first innovation.

Strategic Objective

Zepto's own public framing of the initiative, as reported at launch, positioned Zepto Pass as a means to "transform the urban shopping experience by offering users a blend of convenience and affordability," aimed at urban consumers seeking "seamless and cost-effective solutions for their daily errands" (BW Disrupt, "Zepto Rolls Out Membership Program 'Zepto Pass'"). Secondary reporting citing the company's stated intent described the program's purpose in more explicit commercial terms: "This aggressive pricing strategy is not just about attracting new users but also about increasing the average order value and monthly retention rates among existing customers" (Indian Startup News / Vygrnews, February–March 2024). Read together with the contemporaneous reporting linking the launch to IPO preparation, the strategic objective can be characterised as threefold: (a) increase order frequency and average order value among existing users, (b) build a defensible, lower-churn user base ahead of a planned public listing, and (c) match a subscription mechanism already deployed by rival Swiggy Instamart.

Campaign Architecture & Execution

Zepto Pass was launched in February 2024 as a paid, in-app membership tier available to all Zepto users. Reported benefits included unlimited free deliveries on orders above Rs 99, and discounts of up to 20% on qualifying orders, with the discount threshold varying by user reported variously as above Rs 299 or above Rs 699 for different customer cohorts (BW Retail World, "Zepto's Membership Program 'Zepto Pass' Hits 1 Mn Sign-Ups In Week"). Pricing was tiered and promotional: an introductory price of Rs 19 per month was offered to attract early adoption in metropolitan markets such as Delhi and Kolkata, stepping up to a standard price reported at Rs 99 per month in some coverage and Rs 299 per month in later coverage (BW Disrupt; Business Standard/NewsBytesApp, April 2025). The program was also extended to cover Zepto Cafe, the company's quick-delivery snacks and beverages vertical, so that membership benefits applied across both the core grocery proposition and the newer food-and-beverage vertical (Vygrnews, March 2024).

Within one week of launch, Zepto's co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha stated via a public social media post (cited by BW Retail World) that Zepto Pass had reached one million sign-ups, describing the momentum as reminiscent of "the early days" of the company.

Positioning & Consumer Insight

The design of Zepto Pass reflects a standard "membership economics" logic common to subscription-based retail and delivery platforms: charging a modest recurring fee in exchange for waived delivery charges and threshold-based discounts is intended to shift a customer's psychological frame from per-transaction cost evaluation to a sunk-cost/utilisation mindset, thereby increasing order frequency to "get the value" out of the membership fee already paid. The two-tier pricing structure (a low introductory price rising to a higher standard price) reflects a conventional freemium-to-paid conversion approach intended to reduce the initial adoption barrier before establishing a more commercially viable long-term price point.

The extension of membership benefits to Zepto Cafe suggests an insight that the company sought to position Zepto Pass not merely as a grocery-delivery perk but as a broader "convenience membership" spanning multiple use-occasions (planned grocery restocking as well as impulse/immediate consumption purchases), thereby increasing the surface area of daily life in which membership value could be realised and reinforcing daily app engagement.

Media & Channel Strategy

Based on the sources reviewed, Zepto Pass was communicated primarily through in-app promotion and earned trade/business media coverage generated by company announcements (including the CEO's own social media post announcing the one-million sign-up milestone), rather than through a distinct, separately branded mass-media advertising campaign of the kind typically run for FMCG or consumer-durable launches. No verified public information is available on television, out-of-home, or paid digital media spend specifically attributable to Zepto Pass, as no source reviewed disclosed a dedicated media plan or budget for the program. This is consistent with the broader pattern in India's quick-commerce category, where platform-level app notifications, in-app merchandising, and founder-led social media commentary are commonly used as lower-cost channels for product and program launches.

Business & Brand Outcomes

The clearest documented outcome is the one-million sign-up figure disclosed by CEO Aadit Palicha within the program's first week, as reported by BW Retail World. Beyond this, Zepto's broader financial trajectory over the period the program operated is independently documented: per data reported by Business Standard (citing Tofler filings), Zepto's revenue rose from Rs 2,025 crore in FY23 to Rs 4,454 crore in FY24, while losses narrowed marginally from Rs 1,272.4 crore to Rs 1,248.6 crore over the same period; Palicha stated separately (via LinkedIn, as reported) that PAT as a percentage of revenue improved from -63% in FY23 to -28% in FY24. These figures describe overall company performance during the period Zepto Pass was live and cannot, on the basis of the sources reviewed, be attributed specifically to the membership program as opposed to the company's broader growth in order volumes, city expansion, and dark-store network (which reportedly exceeded 900 stores by the time of its January 2025 funding round, per Business Standard).

The most significant and clearly documented outcome specific to the program itself is its discontinuation. In April 2025, multiple outlets (YourStory, NewsBytesApp) reported that Zepto had quietly shut down Zepto Pass and replaced it with a new program, "Zepto Daily," rolled out on an invite-only basis in select pin codes. Reporting notes there was "no apparent difference between the benefits provided by the two subscriptions," but that the new program was offered at a sharply reduced entry price as low as Rs 1 for select customers, compared with Zepto Pass's reported Rs 299-per-month standard price (or Rs 19 post-discount) (NewsBytesApp, April 7, 2025). NewsBytesApp's coverage characterises the shift as "part of the company's aggressive strategy to lure new customers," and both outlets note that Zepto did not respond to media queries regarding the reasons for the transition at the time.

Separately, and around the same period, Zepto continued to report strong operational momentum at the company level unrelated to the membership program specifically: in October 2025 the company reported delivering over two million daily orders during Diwali week, described by Palicha as 30–40% more than its closest competitor across peak days (Business Standard, October 30, 2025), and in the same month Zepto closed a funding round of approximately $450 million at a $7 billion valuation, led by CalPERS (Business Standard, October 2025), as the company continued preparing for a planned IPO.

Strategic Implications

Three analytical points follow from the verified record. First, the roughly fourteen-month lifespan of Zepto Pass (February 2024 to April 2025) before its quiet replacement by "Zepto Daily" a program offering materially similar benefits at a near-zero entry price suggests that the original paid-membership pricing structure did not achieve the scale or retention economics the company sought, at least not sufficiently to retain the "Pass" branding and fee structure long-term. The shift toward an even lower, near-frictionless price point (down to Rs 1 for select users) is consistent with a strategic pivot from "membership as a revenue-generating product" toward "membership as a near-free retention and habit-formation mechanism," prioritising order-frequency lock-in over subscription-fee income.

Second, the discontinuation occurred against a backdrop of intensifying competitive pressure, with Reuters/Datum Intelligence data showing Blinkit's market share widening to 46–48% by 2025 while Zepto's share held in the low-to-mid 20s. In a category where all three major players (Blinkit, Instamart, and Zepto) have deployed broadly comparable subscription mechanisms, a paid membership fee may function less as a source of differentiation and more as a competitive necessity whose net effect on relative market share is difficult to isolate from other variables such as dark-store density, delivery speed, and city-level penetration none of which the sources reviewed allow this case to attribute specifically to the Pass program's success or failure.

Third, the quiet, unannounced nature of the transition with the company declining to comment publicly on its rationale, as reported by NewsBytesApp is itself a notable data point about how platform-economy membership programs can be iterated or discontinued without the kind of public retrospective, campaign wrap-up, or "results" disclosure that is more typical of traditional FMCG or advertising-led brand campaigns. This limits the extent to which external analysts, including this case study, can draw firm conclusions about the program's return on investment, and underscores a broader pattern in India's quick-commerce sector of frequent, low-visibility experimentation with pricing and retention mechanics ahead of eventual public-market scrutiny.

Discussion Questions

1. What does the roughly fourteen-month lifespan of Zepto Pass, and its replacement by a near-free "Zepto Daily" program with materially similar benefits, suggest about the viability of paid-subscription models as a retention strategy in a deep-discount, low-margin category like Indian quick commerce?

   
   

2. Zepto Pass was explicitly described in contemporaneous reporting as, in part, a competitive response to Swiggy Instamart's earlier subscription program. What are the risks and limitations of designing a retention mechanism primarily to match a competitor's offering rather than a differentiated proposition of one's own?

   
   

3. Given that Zepto's revenue and loss trajectory over FY23–FY24 cannot, based on public information, be specifically attributed to the Zepto Pass program, how should a marketing leader evaluate the success of a retention initiative when company-level financial outcomes are confounded by simultaneous city expansion, dark-store growth, and category-wide demand growth?

   
   

4. What are the implications, for both customers and the company, of transitioning a membership program's economics from a meaningful monthly fee (up to Rs 299) to a near-zero entry price (Rs 1) while keeping benefits largely unchanged?

   
   

5. In the absence of any public disclosure explaining why Zepto Pass was discontinued, what governance or investor-relations considerations might lead a high-growth, pre-IPO private company to quietly retire a customer-facing program rather than issue a public rationale or retrospective?