Aadit Palicha, the young CEO of Zepto, found himself in the middle of a public debate after BJP MP Praveen Khandelwal took issue with his reaction to Union Minister Piyush Goyal’s recent jab at India’s startup priorities.
Speaking at the Startup Mahakumbh, Goyal sparked a conversation when he questioned whether Indian entrepreneurs were too focused on “dukaandari”—a colloquial term loosely translating to small-scale selling. He pointedly contrasted India’s current wave of food delivery apps and fantasy sports platforms with China’s push into future-defining areas like electric mobility, battery tech, and artificial intelligence.
“Are we only going to run shops?” Goyal asked, pushing startups to introspect. He urged founders to look beyond immediate commercial success and start building for the long game—solving hard problems, scaling globally, and fueling real technological progress. India, he warned, has just about 1,000 deep-tech startups today—something he called “worrying.”
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Palicha wasn’t having it. In a strongly worded post, he countered that consumer internet businesses like Zepto are anything but small-time ventures. In fact, he argued, companies like his are laying the very foundation for India’s future in high-tech innovation.
“Amazon, Google, and Alibaba didn’t start with AI—they began with the internet,” Palicha wrote, highlighting how large-scale consumer platforms attract the data, talent, and funding needed to eventually fuel breakthroughs in deep tech.
He also used Zepto’s own success story to push back: “We’ve created 150,000 jobs in just three years. That’s not dukaandari—that’s a miracle in Indian innovation.”
Palicha further emphasized that India won’t see breakthroughs in AI or foundational tech until it builds internet-first companies that generate real cash flow and reinvest in advanced R&D.
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But Khandelwal wasn’t convinced. He criticized Palicha’s remarks, saying they missed the broader message—India needs to stop celebrating convenience and start creating impact.
