Here's a lesson in reading financial documents, using Zepto's DRHP.
Most people found one number, the loss and stopped.
Here's what they missed three pages later.
Quarterly free cash flow: Q2: -₹1,383 Cr Q3: -₹1,061 Cr Q4: -₹882 Cr
A 36% reduction in burn in two quarters. This is hard to crack in my opinion.
NRV grew 57% in the exact same period, from ₹5,175 Cr to ₹8,134 Cr.
And not in a vacuum either.
This happened while fighting Blinkit, Instamart and Flipkart Minutes at the same time, arguably the most contested consumer category in India right now.
The how is explained in the document itself. They stopped chasing new pin codes and started densifying the cities they already win in. More orders per store. Higher frequency per customer. Cost per order fell from ₹181 to ₹128 as a direct result.
This is the difference between a company losing money because the model is broken and a company losing money because it's building infrastructure that's now starting to pay off.
Do your own research, DRHP is public. But at minimum, read past the headline.