Zepto names Shashank Shekhar Sharma as Zepto Café CXO

Shortly after announcing plans to offer its café service as a separate app, Zepto has elevated Shashank Shekhar Sharma as the CXO of Zepto Cafe, effective December 2024.

Sharma, who has been building Zepto Cafe since its inception, will oversee Café operations, footprint expansion, equipment procurement, quality control, and the end-to-end customer experience of Zepto Café, a company statement said.

Previously serving as Business Head at Zepto Cafe, Sharma will continue to report to Zepto President Vinay Dhanani.

"After 2 years of deep work, iteration, and disciplined scaling, Zepto Café is now at 30K+ orders/day and what we believe to be clear customer product-market-fit and solid unit economics.

"This excellent execution was only possible because of the leadership of Shashank Shekhar Sharma, who worked tirelessly with his team to turn Zepto Café from a fringe idea to what could be the next revolution in food QSR in India," Zepto co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha said in a LinkedIn post on Thursday.

Earlier this month, the young CEO in a social media post said that Zepto Cafe will be soon launched as a separate app, and highlighted the rapid scaling of the cafe service which has motivated the separate offering.

"We're launching a separate app for Zepto Cafe next week! The team is shipping an MVP (minimum viable product) and iterating quickly, so it may not be perfect on Day 1, but it's worth it to launch fast.

"Zepto Cafe is scaling rapidly; we're launching 100+ cafes a month and already clocking more than 30 thousand orders per day," Palicha wrote.

Zepto Cafe was launched in April 2022 as a division of Zepto, which itself was founded in July 2021 by Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra.

Last month, Zepto revealed plans to broaden its café service to key cities, launching over 120 cafés in locations including Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru, with upcoming expansions to Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune.

"The response has been phenomenal, with Zepto Cafe now achieving an (estimated) Annual Run Rate (ARR) GMV of Rs 160 crore with just 15 per cent of our expanding dark store network with proven unit economics.

"As we expand into new cities and launch 100-plus new cafes every month, we are on track to achieve an ARR of Rs 1,000 crore by the next fiscal year," Palicha had said.