In a post-Instamart, ultra-urban India, where bananas arrive faster than brainstorms and planning is an outdated skill, a new startup is asking a different kind of question: Why should fashion require foresight?
Welcome to ZILO, a newly launched fashion-tech platform that promises top-brand fashion at your doorstep in 60 minutes—with home trials, instant returns, and curated choices that take the guesswork (and gruntwork) out of shopping.
Founded by Padmakumar Pal (ex-VP Flipkart & Myntra) and Bhavik Jhaveri (Pretr, ex-Head of Product at Myntra), ZILO just raised $4.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Info Edge Ventures and Chiratae Ventures. Their ambition is razor sharp: to rewire Indian fashion retail with speed, curation, and confidence—without falling into the usual quick-commerce trap of promising speed and delivering stress.
Not Just Another Delivery App
ZILO enters a fashion ecosystem that has seen dozens of players optimise for inventory scale, price wars, and ‘new-user’ discount funnels. But few have solved what the discerning shopper actually craves: a blend of speed, style, trust, and flexibility.
In ZILO’s world, there are no impulse-only carts, no delayed returns, and no digging through irrelevant filters. Just a seamless loop:
- Pick a few styles across top brands
- Choose multiple sizes if you wish
- Try them at home with a ZILO style runner waiting outside
- Return what doesn’t fit or feel right—on the spot
- Pay only for what you keep
That’s fashion retail redesigned for a consumer who’s busy, impatient, and exacting—and who doesn’t think about fashion days in advance, but maybe just one hour ahead.
Who Has Time? To Shop?
This is ZILO’s signature line. It speaks directly to the always-on, always-late urban shopper juggling unplanned office events, weddings, weekend trips, and impromptu dinners. In the beta launch, ZILO is live in Mumbai (Andheri to Borivali), with an eye on rapid expansion to other metro markets by the end of the year.
The brand currently stocks 250+ fashion labels including household names and niche disruptors: Levi’s, Puma, Reebok, Veromoda, W, Biba, Snitch, The Souled Store, Manyavar, Libas, Rare Rabbit, Andamen, and many more. The team plans to scale to nearly 100,000 styles across apparel, footwear, watches, fashion jewellery, and accessories before the festive season.
But unlike most marketplaces, ZILO doesn’t carry stale inventory. There are no off-season racks here. “We only offer high-conviction, in-season styles—what a customer wants right now,” says Padmakumar.
And that’s where their hybrid supply model kicks in: a mix of dark stores and select brand outlets that enable real-time, hyper-local fulfilment. Combine that with ZILO’s logistics tech, and you get what co-founder Bhavik calls “fashion without follow-up.”
A Quick-Commerce Play? Not Quite. A Fashion Infrastructure Bet? Maybe.
In the last two years, India’s quick-commerce market exploded from $0.5 billion (FY22) to $3.3 billion (FY24). While grocery giants like Blinkit and Zepto now serve 1 in 3 urban Indian homes, the model’s extension into non-essential, high-AOV categories like fashion has remained largely uncharted.
ZILO is not trying to compete with Instamart. It’s building a new layer of infrastructure—one that reimagines retail as a responsive service, not a static store.
“Most retail platforms today are built for scale, not for experience,” says Bhavik. “They’re fragmented, impersonal, and inefficient. We’re rebuilding it from the ground up—starting with what the customer wants: decision simplicity and delivery control.”
Tech Meets Taste: What Makes ZILO Different
The platform includes:
- Ask ZILO: AI-based styling support for last-minute looks
- Style Planner: Human+machine curated outfit ideas across events
- Scheduled Home Trials: Try-on at home, with returns done instantly
- Checkout-Free UX: Minimal friction, maximum speed
- Real-Time Fulfilment Engine: Optimised by demand signals and store proximity
The ZILO app isn’t live yet, but the web beta is functional and growing via word-of-mouth and early adopters—especially among 25–40-year-olds who are style-aware, time-poor, and used to on-demand convenience.
Investors Are Taking Note—and Sides
Kitty Agarwal, Partner at Info Edge Ventures, says:
“ZILO combines speed, trust, and personalisation—the three ingredients that drive adoption and loyalty. Padmakumar and Bhavik bring rare operational depth and product thinking. We believe ZILO will set a new standard in quick fashion commerce.”
Anoop Menon of Chiratae Ventures adds:
“Even in our early fashion bets—Myntra, Firstcry, Lenskart—we saw the friction in discovery. ZILO is not fixing catalogues; it’s fixing consumer indecision and timing. That’s a bigger, deeper play.”
What ZILO Really Represents
ZILO isn’t just riding the next commerce wave—it may be building the railroads. Its model suggests that urban Indian fashion retail is no longer about browsing and bookmarking. It’s about curation, control, and convenience—all converging in the final mile.
What Amazon did for delivery windows, ZILO may do for personal style.
And in doing so, it sends a signal to the rest of the industry:
The future of fashion isn’t faster. It’s smarter, simpler—and precisely on time.
