Indian quick-commerce startup Zepto has surpassed the annualised sales milestone of $1 billion within just 29 months of its inception, Goldman Sachs wrote in a note Thursday, citing the Zepto management.
Zepto, which became a unicorn last year, counts YC Continuity, StepStone Group, Glade Brook Capital and Lachy Groom among its backers.
“Overall EBITDA margin for Zepto is at negative single-digit percentage and the company is on track to break even at the EBITDA level within the next quarter.
The company expects steady state contribution margin of 12%, with steady state EBITDA margin of 7%,” the report added.
Zepto believes it can expand into 40-50 cities over time,” the report added.
Mews, one of the startups building tools to help hotels manage IT better is announcing a growth round of $110 million to capture more business.
The funding — led by Kinnevik — is coming in at a $1.2 billion valuation post-money.
That is a slight up-round on the Series C that Amsterdam-based Mews announced at the end of 2022, when Mews raised $185 million on an $865 million valuation.
It said it now has more than 5,000 hotel customers, compared to 3,253 hotels a year ago.
Mews nominally looks after hotels and hospitality, but that could be hostels or Airbnbs or services for people in mixed-use real estate.
Consolidation is afoot in the world of HR services, with larger players snapping up interesting, smaller startups en route to more robust unit economics and providing one-stop shops for customers looking to cut down on suppliers.
In the latest development, Deel — the $12 billion HR business out of Paris — is scooping up Zavvy, a Munich-based AI-based “people development” startup building tools for personalized career progression, training, and performance management.
Finally, Deel will also make its existing Deel HR tool, which was free for organizations of up to 200 users, now “free” for existing customers regardless of their size.
Originally Deel approached Zavvy with a partnership proposal before making an offer to buy it outright.
By Zavvy’s and Deel’s accounts, the former company has not found it hard to build its business in a tighter market.
The sell-off of Qualtrics, a hot startup before SAP bought the company in 2018, made the founders rich but it never truly fit into SAP’s larger vision. The spinoff happened…
