Zepto co-founder Aadit Palicha has claimed that India’s consumer internet startups are vital for innovation. While highlighting the recent criticism of Indian start-ups, he points to Zepto’s growth and contributions, urging support for local companies to foster technological advancements.
Taking to the social media platform X, Aadit Palicha wrote, “It is easy to criticise consumer internet startups in India, especially when you compare them to the deep technical excellence being built in US/China.”
Zepto’s example
He further gave an example and said, “the reality is this: there are almost 1.5 Lakh real people who are earning livelihoods on Zepto today – a company that did not exist 3.5 years ago. ₹1,000+ Crores of tax contribution to the government per year, over a billion dollars of FDI brought into the country and hundreds of crores invested in organizing India’s backend supply chains (especially for fresh fruits and vegetables). If that isn’t a miracle in Indian innovation, I honestly don’t know what is.”
Piyush Goyal’s ‘reality check’ jab
The Zepto co-founder statement comes after Union Minister Piyush Goyal criticised Indian startups and questioned whether people across India would settle for low-paying gig jobs as China moved towards deep-tech innovation.
“Indian startups need a reality check in terms of what they are doing. It is essential that we focus on industries that truly add value to our economy. We shouldn’t shy away from competition, but rather strive for innovation and long-term sustainability,” the Union Minister said at the Startup Mahakumbh 2025.
Goyal further added, “We need to go global and think big. When we look at deep tech, there are only about 1,000 startups in the ecosystem, and it is a disturbing sign. It is upon the startups to focus either on wealth creation in the short run or rising to the international scale.”
Concerns over tech-led innovation
Palicha raised the alarm about why India is not racing towards its AI technology model.
“Why doesn’t India have its own large-scale foundational AI model? It’s because we still haven’t built great internet companies. Most technology-led innovation over the past 2 decades has originated from consumer internet companies. Who scaled cloud computing? Amazon (originally a consumer internet company). Who are the big players in AI today? Facebook, Google, Alibaba, Tencent etc. (all started as consumer internet companies),” the Zepto co-founder said.
Why consumer internet companies are important?
Palicha also stated the reasons why consumer internet companies promote innovation in a country. He highlighted the need for government support and capital to promote Indian start-ups.
“Consumer internet companies drive this innovation because they have the best data, talent, and capital to put behind it. We need to build great local champions on the internet that are generating hundreds of millions of dollars in FCF first if we ever want to get a piece of great technology revolutions,” Palicha said.
“The startup ecosystem, the government, and the owners of large pools of Indian capital need to actively support the creation of these local champions, not pull down the teams that are trying hard to get there,” he added.
Mohandas Pai criticises Piyush Goyal
Apart from Aadit Palicha, Piyush Goyal’s statement received a response from Mohandas Pai, former Board member of tech major Infosys. He asked Goyal to “not belittle our startups” and said what the Minister did for “deep tech startups to grow in India.”
Pai further criticised Nirmala Sitharaman and the Reserve Bank of India for not promoting startups.
