- ‘Murderous’ Robert Durst was ‘a unicorn,’ ‘comfortable with gang members in prison,’ says ‘Jinx: Part Two’ director New York Post
- ‘The Jinx’ Finally Explains Mystery of Robert Durst Arrest One Day Before TV Confession Hollywood Reporter
- The Jinx: Part Two review – more bombshells from Robert Durst, the serial killer who just won’t shut up The Guardian
- ‘The Jinx’ Director Andrew Jarecki Tells All on Robert Durst’s Downfall The Daily Beast
- ‘The Jinx Part Two’ Review: Filmmaking a Murderer The New York Times
Tag Archives: unicorn
Final Fantasy Tactics director encourages fans begging for a remake to give Unicorn Overlord their support: “The market for tactical RPGs is small” – Gamesradar
- Final Fantasy Tactics director encourages fans begging for a remake to give Unicorn Overlord their support: “The market for tactical RPGs is small” Gamesradar
- Apparently ‘Unicorn Overlord’ Already Has Issues With Its Localization Forbes
- The Localization Labyrinth: Unicorn Overlord’s Controversial Adaptation Sparks Debate Medriva
- ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’ Director Responds To Western Localization Discourse Surrounding ‘Unicorn Overlord’: “It Is Unacceptable For Someone To Alter A Work Without Considering The Original Author’s Intent” Bounding Into Comics
Vanillaware shares fresh details on forthcoming tactical RPG Unicorn Overlord – Eurogamer.net
- Vanillaware shares fresh details on forthcoming tactical RPG Unicorn Overlord Eurogamer.net
- That’s it, I’ve seen enough: with Fire Emblem and Suikoden vibes, this beautiful tactical RPG is officially one of my most-anticipated games of 2024 Gamesradar
- Unicorn Overlord introduces new Allies, exploring the Overworld, liberating Towns, and additional mechanics RPG Site
- Unicorn Overlord Details Quests, Town Rebuilding, Mock Battles & Mining Minigame Noisy Pixel
- Unicorn Overlord Characters and Gameplay Detailed Siliconera
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Stanford dropouts’ startup worth millions, could be India tech unicorn
“When we started this 12 months ago, every conversation we had was, ‘You’re totally out of your mind, this is never going to work,'” said teenage CEO Aadit Palicha.
Yet, Palicha’s company has managed to prove those doubters wrong — it’s now nearing unicorn status and is one of India’s fastest-growing quick commerce apps. A unicorn is a startup valued at more than $1 billion.
Zepto is a startup that promises to deliver groceries in less than 10 minutes. Despite being just one of many businesses to join the instant commerce wave, it has already caught the eyes of investors.
Its latest cash injection of $200 million in May 2022 valued the business at $900 million, just nine months after its launch.
We figured that was just a more exciting opportunity than studying in an elite university.
Aadit Palicha
Co-founder and CEO, Zepto
Driving its meteoric growth are Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, two 19-year-olds who dropped out of Stanford University to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.
“At that point, we had already scaled to a couple million dollars of annualized revenue. We said here’s an opportunity to raise a large amount of capital, it’s got clear product market fit,” Palicha told CNBC Make It.
“How many people in their lifetimes get an opportunity to build a potential generational company? We figured that was just a more exciting opportunity than studying in an elite university.”
From 45 to 10 minutes
The idea for Zepto came in July 2021 — when the childhood friends were stuck in their homes in Mumbai, right in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic and a nationwide lockdown.
At the time, demand for delivery services surged as many stayed home.
“Online groceries [would] take six, seven days to deliver, offline options were practically shut down or unavailable. It was incredibly difficult for us to get groceries,” said Palicha, who is Zepto’s CEO.
“We had sort of similar conversations with our neighbors that complained about pretty much the same problem. That’s when we said … why don’t we try building a solution for the folks in our neighborhood?”
If you look at all the other major categories of e-commerce … you take all of them and combine them, they’re a fraction of the grocery market.
Aadit Palicha
Co-founder and CEO, Zepto
But Palicha and Vohra were no strangers to the instant grocery delivery business. In 2020 — at just 17 years old — they started KiranaKart, which they said delivered groceries in Mumbai in under 45 minutes.
“Some people were getting their deliveries [within] a 10-15 minute timeframe,” Vohra said.
“In terms of their retention, how much they liked the platform and how frequently they were referring to their friends, [it] was significantly higher for those people who got the deliveries in that timeframe.”
“Which is why we said, ‘Look, maybe there’s some value in exploring that.'”
Zepto isn’t the only quick commerce startup in India, and competition is heating up both domestically and globally. The country’s online grocery market is set to be worth around $24 billion dollars by 2025, according to Redseer.
Zepto
They weren’t wrong. According to research from consulting firm Redseer, India’s online grocery market could be worth up to $25 billion by 2025 and that is an opportunity that was “too compelling to pass up,” said Palicha.
“If you look at all the other major categories of e-commerce — electronics, apparel, you take all of them and combine them, they’re a fraction of the grocery market,” he added.
Building trust and reliability
In order to fulfill grocery orders in under 10 minutes, the duo established a network of dark stores, or microdistribution hubs across cities.
Dark stores are are closed to the public, housing goods meant solely for online ordering.
“We design our network across the city, to make sure that our points of pickup are very close to population clusters in a specific neighborhood,” Palicha said.
In order to fulfill grocery orders in under 10 minutes, the duo established a network of dark stores, like the one above, across cities.
Zepto
“What ends up happening is that the average distances of our deliveries are so short, we’re able to get deliveries done consistently in 10 minutes.”
The startup added that the average distance for its deliveries ranges from 1.7 to 2 kilometers. Other forms of hyperlocal delivery, it said, could be “2 to 2.5 times longer than that.”
Today, Zepto says, it operates hundreds of dark stores across 10 cities in India, with tens of thousands of delivery drivers at work. Palicha added that it is currently delivering “90 to 95%” of its orders between five and 20 minutes.
But speed is not Zepto’s only secret to retaining customers and building loyalty. The startup, whose name comes from zeptosecond — the smallest unit of time — claimed it is adding 100,000 new users daily.
“To really retain customers for the long term, what do you really need to build is trust and reliability. Reliability comes in many ways,” said Vohra, who is also the chief technology officer.
“Yes, we deliver on time, but also reliability in terms of — if I ordered 10 things, I get those 10 exact things. And if I order fruits and vegetables, [they’re] the highest quality possible.”
Keeping cash burn low
Investors are excited about Zepto’s popularity too.
To date, the company had attracted $360 million dollars from investors, including Y Combinator, U.S. health-care consortium Kaiser Permanente and Nexus Venture Partners. Its latest funding round puts the company on course for a likely $1 billion valuation.
Palicha said one the key drivers of Zepto’s investment success is its “operating discipline.”
“When we went to investors this time around, we showed very, very clear paths to profitability. We went from $0 in revenue roughly a year ago to today, we’re doing hundreds of millions of dollars in annualized revenue,” he added.
“We’re still talking in terms of multiples and not percentages when it comes to our growth rate, and that’s something that we’re excited by.”
Since day one, we’ve been … forcing ourselves to be efficient to make every dollar last.
Aadit Palicha
Co-founder and CEO, Zepto
Zepto claims it has managed to reduce its cash burn rate by 5 times on a per-order basis, while achieving a quarter-on-quarter revenue growth of 800%.
Even so, the days of easy money for cash-burning tech companies are gone, as interest rates rise and investors demand more results. Nonetheless, the young founders remain unfazed.
“We’re in a position where you look at the size of our balance sheet, we effectively got capital to last us multiple years, in the context of this downturn,” said Palicha.
“Since day one, we’ve been … forcing ourselves to be efficient to make every dollar last. We’re able to do more orders with the same amount of cash, we’re able to acquire more customers with the same amount of cash.”
Zepto’s founders may be young, but their conviction in their product is unwavering. “Whether it was in front of an investor, a senior executive, any government stakeholder and regulator, you realize what you’re building is on the right side of what customers want,” said Aadit Palicha (right).
Zepto
Keeping costs lower than its competitors in the high-growth tech category has given them an edge, said the duo.
“That just puts us in a position where we are able to continue growing sustainably, where other folks have been forced to … induce layoffs, essentially pull back growth plans and contract to survive in a market like this,” Palicha added.
Touching ‘the billion mark’?
Because of that difficult environment, Palicha and Vohra aren’t resting on their laurels despite the fresh funding that Zepto has in the bag.
“The key focus now is to just build the incremental scale we need to break even in key markets. Once we have a balance sheet that is now operating in breakeven, we can start expanding into new cities with a lot more confidence and clarity,” said Palicha.
It was previously reported that Zepto is making $200 million to $400 million dollars in annualized revenue and the founders are now hoping to “touch the billion mark.”
Palicha added: “[Zepto] came out as a personal project between Kaivalya and [me] to see if we could solve a problem at a small scale in our neighborhood.”
“It eventually evolved into the company that we are today, which we’re incredibly grateful for.”
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India’s Slice becomes unicorn with $220M funding from Tiger Global, Insight Partners and Advent – TechCrunch
Rajan Bajaj, founder of fintech Slice, chimed in on a Twitter thread early this year and wondered aloud what he needs to do to turn his startup into a unicorn before he turns 30.
At just 28, Flipkart alum Bajaj has figured it out.
Slice, which was valued at under $200 million in a financing round in June this year, has raised $220 million fundraise that values it at over $1 billion, the startup said on Monday.
Tiger Global and Insight Partners co-led the Bangalore-based startup’s Series B round. Private equity firm Advent International’s Sunley House Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Anfa, and existing investors Gunosy, Blume Ventures, and 8i also participated in it.
TechCrunch reported early last month that Tiger Global and Insight Global were in talks to back Slice. A source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the round could grow further to $250 million.
Slice has established itself as one of the market leading card-issuing firms in India. The startup offers a number of cards that are aimed at tech-savvy young professionals in the country. “These users have been on Instagram and Snapchat for years,” said Bajaj of Slice customers in an interview with TechCrunch.
“The bar for consumer design is very high for them. We don’t have to educate them on how to navigate the app. It’s intuitive for them. They want simplicity and transparency,” he said.
The median age of Slice customers is 27, which is also about the age of the team members at Slice who are building the app, he said.
Image credits: Slice
The market of credit cards is massive in India and it remains largely untapped.
Despite nearly a billion Indians having a bank account, only a tiny fraction of this population is covered by the South Asian nation’s young credit rating system.
As we have outlined in the past, Indian banks heavily rely on archaic methodologies to determine an individual’s creditworthiness and whether they deserve a credit card. Their conclusion: it’s too risky to give a credit card or even a loan to most Indians.
Slice is tackling this by using its own underwriting system. Such is the confidence it has in its underwriting system that in September this year, it launched a card with $27 limit — an offering that was inspired by a request from a potential customer — to tap into the nation’s 200 million population. Bajaj (pictured above) said the new card is gaining fast traction, but declined to share any figures. Slice has a registered user base of over 5 million users.
The startup offers Slice customers a range of features such as the ability to pay the bill in multiple instalments spread across three months at no charge as well as access to discounts on purchase with scores of brands.
Slice says it is issuing over 200,000 cards each month, which according to a person familiar with industry figures, makes the startup the third largest card issuer in India after two banks. Slice has a waitlist of over a million users, it said on Twitter.
“Slice has built a product that customers love, which we expect will result in continued growth and market share gains,” said Alex Cook, a partner at Tiger Global, in a statement. “We are excited to partner with Rajan and the team as they expand access to credit and deliver best-in-class customer experience.”
Slice is moving with an annual revenue runrate of over $60 million, according to the source quoted above. The source requested anonymity as the details are private. Bajaj declined to comment on financial figures.
Slice will deploy the fresh funds to expand its product offerings. In the coming months, it plans to launch support for UPI, a payments railroad developed by a coalition of retail banks and which is the most popular way Indians transact online, he said.
The startup may also launch some new cards, one of which may be focused at teens, the aforementioned source said. Slice is also working on a decentralized product called ‘&ID,’ Bajaj said in a LinkedIn post earlier this year.
“It has become second nature for us to jump between identities whether we are online or offline. What if we stop and think about one ID that can be used everywhere and is fully controlled by you? Picture an ID that can be used to accept payments, do KYC, make investments, apply for a visa, rent a car or even create a unique link to all of your brand’s social presence online — without any censorship,” he said in the post.
Slice’s UPI offering will be the first product to adopt &ID. The startup is also looking to hire more people, he said. Slice last month announced that it is offering new hires a three-day week with steady pay and benefits to attract talent that wishes to work on other opportunities — or do whatever else they like — at the same time.
“Slice targets an underpenetrated market in India and seamlessly allows users to make online payments, pay bills and more,” said Deven Parekh, Managing Director at Insight Partners, in a statement, “There is a large opportunity in the credit and payment space in India, and slice is well-positioned to become the leader in the industry. We look forward to this partnership with slice as they continue to scale up and grow.”
Snowcone the Happy Unicorn is the latest victim of manufacturing chaos
Fargo, who imports Snowcone from a manufacturer in China, paid $1,300 in May for 500 of them. When she went in to re-up her order in August, the same order cost $9,000.
“I can’t place an order. My margins just do not support it,” said Fargo, whose Costa Mesa, California-based business Cre8ive-D normally sells the product on its website and in Hallmark stores. Fargo is searching for manufacturing options in India and Europe to produce a couple hundred of the stuffed animals for Christmas, but her hopes are fading. Fargo had considered raising prices on customers to offset her higher costs, but her window to secure the toys for the holidays has passed.
“It’s really a big blow,” she said.
The problem is not demand from customers for the toy, according to Fargo. “The demand is there. It’s the supply.”
Increased expenses and myriad supply chains pressures — factory shutdowns, bottlenecks at key ports, and struggles hiring domestic truck drivers — are taking a toll on businesses of all sizes entering the pivotal holiday stretch. They are especially difficult for mom-and-pop owners like Fargo to navigate. That could impact the products they are able to carry during the holiday and the prices they sell them for more so than larger competitors, supply chain experts say.
“Large retailers have an enormous advantage over small stores because of their scale, resources, supplier relationships and systems,” said Patrick Penfield, a supply chain management professor at Syracuse University. “Smaller retailers are going to really struggle to fill their shelves. It’s going to be a difficult holiday season for them.”
Thirty-seven percent of small business owners report supply chain disruptions have had a significant impact on their business, while 29% reported a moderate impact, according to a survey of 595 businesses in August by the National Federation of Independent Business, a small business lobbying group. A September survey of 2,682 small business owners by Alignable, a small business social networking company, found that 78% said they are having difficulties getting supplies.
As companies battle to secure inventory for holiday shoppers, large companies have the upper hand over smaller competitors at nearly every link of the chain, according to supply chain experts. They also have greater ability to absorb higher costs, say experts.
“If you are a supplier to Walmart or Target, you are going to do whatever they ask just because of the sheer volume of what they purchase and getting potential business in the future,” said Penfield.
Why small stores are at a disadvantage
This year, top players such as Walmart (WMT), Costco (COST), Target (TGT), Home Depot (HD) and others are chartering their own private ships to bring in merchandise from overseas, loading up on extra inventory, and using more expensive air freight to ship merchandise.
“We’ll be ready for the holidays,” Target CEO Brian Cornell said in a CNBC interview in August. “We have got a lot of inventory flowing our way right now.”
One big advantage for top chains is scale, which translates to priority with shippers. Edwin Keh, head of the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel and a former chief operating officer and senior vice president of Walmart’s global procurement, said large retailers have long-term contracts with shipping companies and enough volume that make them shippers’ most important customers. That’s a big benefit when containers are stuck at ports.
“This makes their containers first to get onboard and last to be offloaded,” he said in an email. “They also have dedicated agents at the ports to help smooth the clearance process, saving them time.”
Large retailers also often have backup suppliers in different parts of the world to allow them to avoid port bottlenecks, he said. “If some of the ports or routes from Asia gets too crowded, they can shift to Central or South America to manufacture their goods and vice versa,” Keh said.
Most independent stores don’t have the access to capital to fund costly options like chartering ships, nor do they have backup suppliers on hand.
The holidays are usually a busy time of year for Simply Naked Candle Co., a boutique candle shop in Conyers, Georgia. But this year, the store is having trouble procuring jars, wax and fragrances from domestic suppliers that are essential to producing its most in-demand candles, such as Love and Honey, Brown Sugar and Pineapple Passion.
Co-owner Shante Smith has set up email alerts from essential oils’ suppliers that notify her when oils she needs are back in stock. She recently get an alert at 2:00 a.m. and woke up to buy the product on the spot because she worried it would be sold out by the morning.
Smith is paying $5 for jars that cost $1.75 last year. A 50-pound box of wax costs $110, up from $55. Smith used to order these supplies in bulk, but now she’s ordering them piecemeal when she’s running low since she doesn’t have the cash to pay for the quantity she’d normally get.
“If we could afford to order more, we would,” she said. “We have a very, very strict budget.”
Ideally, Smith would buy full pallets of around 1,000 jars, which would allow her to bring down the price she pays per unit. “If we could afford to order more, we would,” she said. “We have a very, very strict budget.” But she’s stuck paying more for less since she can’t meet that threshold.
“If I had enough to buy pallets at a time, that would be a good Christmas for me.”
A stray dog kept stealing a stuffed unicorn from a Dollar General, so animal control bought it for him
The business in Kenansville, North Carolina, called animal control on Sisu, a large male stray dog, because of his repeated thievery. He had come to the store five times to steal the same stuffed unicorn.
However, instead of being left empty handed, the Dublin County Animal Control officer who went to pick him up ended up buying the toy for Sisu instead.
The department posted pictures on social media Monday of him cuddling his coveted treasure at the county animal shelter, and his story quickly went viral.
“This is what happens when you break into the dollar general consistently to steal the purple unicorn that you laid claim to but then get animal control called to lock you up for your B & E and larceny but the officer purchases your item for you and brings it in with you,” the Facebook post says.
Due to becoming a famous criminal, Sisu, and his unicorn, were quickly adopted one day later, according to Animal Services.