e-commerce
Zepto ATOM gets personal with brands through powerful persona play
MUMBAI: Guess who’s checking you out before you even check out? Zepto is flipping the quick commerce script with a powerful new upgrade to its brand intelligence platform, Zepto ATOM. The latest feature, ‘Consumer Persona’, promises to make your data talk and it’s fluent in insights, psychographics, and pin code-level purchase patterns.
Think of it as a personal shopper for brands only smarter, faster, and built with data science. Whether it’s figuring out why someone didn’t add that chocolate bar to cart, when they’ll most likely return for dog food, or how diet preferences shift across Delhi vs. Dadar, Zepto’s persona engine has the answers.
“From multi-agency guesswork to real-time decision-making, this changes the game,” said Zepto chief business officer Devender Meel. “Brands can now engage with AI-powered personas, test messaging live, and optimise their campaigns in the moment.”
Zepto ATOM’s suite now includes:
● Chat with Synthesised Personas: Marketers can interact with AI avatars that mimic real customers to pressure-test ideas and pricing.
● Hyperlocal Campaign Launcher: Roll out ads based on city-level psychographics or cart behaviour in minutes.
● Upcoming features: Run city-specific surveys and tap into fresh audiences via sampling campaigns.
Zepto assures that all of this remains privacy-safe no personally identifiable information (PII) is involved. Insights are anonymised, yet razor-sharp.
More than 100 brands, including Tata Consumer Products, Mars, Henkel, The Whole Truth, Sid’s Farm, and Bagrry’s, are already aboard. Since launch in May 2025, Zepto ATOM has logged 40,000 plus usage hours, with over 1,500 brands participating in trial phases.
“Zepto GPT and pin code-level Geo insights have helped us pivot strategies at lightning speed,” said Shriram from Tata Consumer Products. Mensa Brands’ Ananth Narayan added, “It’s like having a crystal ball for e-commerce, but better because it’s data.”
As the quick commerce race heats up, Zepto’s making sure brands don’t just keep up, they get ahead, one consumer insight at a time.
e-commerce
Flipkart cuts around 300 jobs in annual performance review
E-commerce giant trims ~1.5 per cent of workforce as IPO preparations continue.
MUMBAI: Flipkart just gave performance the pink slip because when the annual review bell rings, even the biggest cart sometimes needs to lighten its load. Flipkart has let go of approximately 300 employees as part of its annual performance management cycle, Moneycontrol reported on 7 March 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. The exits represent roughly 1.5 per cent of the company’s total workforce of around 20,000 people across its businesses.
The move follows Flipkart’s standard practice of asking employees placed in lower performance bands to leave during yearly reviews, a process the company has carried out periodically in recent years. A similar exercise in early 2024 saw around 1,000 employees (nearly 5 per cent of the workforce) exit.
The latest round comes amid Flipkart’s continued push for operational efficiency and cost discipline, mirroring broader trends across the Indian startup ecosystem where funding slowdowns have shifted focus toward profitability.
The development also arrives as Flipkart advances preparations for a potential domestic IPO. The company has held early discussions with investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Kotak Mahindra Capital to explore feasibility. Industry sources indicate a possible listing timeline of late 2026 or early 2027, though the final size and schedule remain undecided.
In December 2025, Flipkart received National Company Law Tribunal approval to shift its holding company domicile from Singapore back to India. a key regulatory step that simplifies the group structure ahead of a public market debut.
Controlled by Walmart, Flipkart remains one of India’s largest e-commerce platforms, locked in fierce competition with Amazon. In a market where every rupee counts and every headcount is scrutinised, the latest cuts aren’t just housekeeping, they’re part of a bigger balancing act between growth ambitions and the road to listing.
