'I need to take a flight from where I stay in Bengaluru to airport': Zepto CEO reveals biggest problem in his life

In a recent interview on Exploring Minds podcast, Palicha aired his contemporary challenges.

Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha flagged Bengaluru's traffic as one of the "biggest problem in his life" after a podcast interviewer raised question on contemporary challenges, documenting the life of India's youngest unicorn founder.

Along with Bengaluru citizens voicing against the city's prolonging traffic congestion and poor road infrastructure in reddit and other social media in place, Zepto co-founder Palicha, recently joins the thread.

Speaking on the Exploring Minds podcast hosted by Shivank Joshi, he claimed that because of Bengaluru traffic woes, he had to book flight, a travel between his stay to airport, remarking it as a 'most painful thing'.

In the interview, Palicha was asked what problem he’d pay to solve immediately.

“The biggest problem that I have in my life is the commute whenever I need to take a flight from where I stay in Bangalore to the airport,” he said. “That’s like the most painful thing that I have to do one or two times a month.”

In reply, Joshi said that several companies are working on easing the airport commute, suggesting a solution may be in place by 2026 or 2027.

“I’ll be very happy if that happens,” the founder replied.

Palicha also talked about work-life challenges, of being conscious about multi-platform communication.

“I’ve got email, Slack, WhatsApp, LinkedIn… and on the first three especially, a lot of important conversations happen, so everything gets mixed up,” he said. “I’d rather have one interface where all that is happening.”

Joshi called it “a real founder’s problem,” to which Palicha addressed that Beeper in Silicon Valley had tried to tackle the issue, few had succeeded in making it work at scale.

The founder also shared his wish to study summaries akin academic repository classes, years after entering job market.

"I love reading, and I think if I could get summaries- but much richer summaries- that would be great. Maybe like a repository classes taught in colleges."

“JSTOR has research material, but imagine access to great college lectures in one place,” Joshi said.

Bengaluru's initiatives including B-SMILE project, Real-time traffic signal timers in app, metro expansions, all aimed at easing the traffic, yet challenges to resolve the city's vehicular congestion.