Zepto and Eveready Launch Doorstep Battery Recycling: Can Quick Commerce Turn Dead Batteries into a Green IPO Story?

For five years, Zepto trained Indians to press a button and make consumption appear at the door. Milk arrived. Bread arrived. Chocolates, chargers, diapers and batteries arrived.

Now Zepto wants the dead battery back.

Eveready and the quick-commerce company have launched “Batteries for Better”, a doorstep collection programme in Delhi and Bengaluru. A customer placing an order can select “Return Battery” at checkout and hand used household batteries to the delivery partner. Eveready says the batteries will travel through authorised channels for recycling and disposal. Customers receive a certificate and become eligible for benefits on later Eveready purchases, according to the companies’ announcement.

The initiative is small, geographically limited and short on disclosed targets. It is also far more interesting than the usual sustainability press release.

Quick commerce was built as a one-way machine. Inventory entered the dark store, an order entered the app and a rider carried the product to the customer. Every trip ended after delivery.

Zepto is now trying to use the empty journey back. If it works, the company’s most valuable asset may not be ten-minute delivery alone. A dense network of dark stores, riders and repeated household visits can become collection infrastructure for batteries, packaging, small electronics, textiles and other objects Indian cities struggle to retrieve after consumption.

The rider who delivers desire can carry away its debris.

But green ambition has arrived at a financially awkward moment. Zepto doubled its operating revenue in FY26 and still lost almost ₹5,905 crore. Its public listing has been postponed after investors reportedly resisted the valuation it wanted. The company that taught India to measure convenience in minutes must now persuade the market to measure its business in eventual profits.

Can dead batteries help charge that story?

New Battery In. Dead Battery Out

The consumer logic is almost embarrassingly obvious.

Millions of used household batteries remain forgotten in drawers because disposal requires knowledge and effort. Dustbins are easy. Authorised collection points are not. Zepto and Eveready are removing that friction by attaching disposal to an activity customers already perform.

“The biggest barrier to responsible disposal is not intent, it is convenience,” Zepto chief business officer Devendra Meel reportedly said while announcing the programme. “Most households have used batteries lying in drawers because there has never been a simple, everyday way to return them.”

That diagnosis is persuasive. The programme does not ask a customer to discover a recycler, attend a collection drive or make a separate trip. A battery leaves the house when another order enters it.

The environmental need is also real. India’s Battery Waste Management Rules, notified in 2022, apply the principle of extended producer responsibility. Battery producers must meet collection and recycling obligations and work through registered channels. Waste batteries cannot simply be sent to landfill or incineration. Eveready therefore has a regulatory as well as environmental reason to make collection easier.

This does not invalidate the green claim. Good regulation is supposed to make responsible conduct commercially necessary.

It does, however, change the question. The initiative simultaneously serves the planet, Eveready’s compliance obligations, Zepto’s brand and future battery sales. Customers who return used batteries are eligible for special benefits on later Eveready purchases through Zepto. The circular economy may also become a circular sales funnel.

The Green Loop With Missing Numbers

The announcement describes an ecosystem. It does not disclose the mathematics required to judge one.

Eveready and Zepto have not stated how many batteries they expect to collect, how much waste that represents, what percentage of Eveready’s producer obligation the programme might fulfil or when Delhi and Bengaluru will be expanded into other cities.

They have not identified the authorised recyclers that will receive the batteries. They have not explained how the waste will be sorted, stored at dark stores or transported, what training riders will receive, whether delivery partners will be paid for the additional task or who bears the collection cost.

These are not administrative footnotes. A used battery is not an empty biscuit wrapper. Different chemistries carry different handling risks. A collection programme needs containers, segregation, records, storage protocols and an accountable journey from the customer’s hand to the recycler. “Responsible disposal” becomes meaningful only when that chain can be measured.

The companies have supplied a certificate for the consumer. They must eventually supply a scorecard for the programme.

How many batteries were collected? How many kilograms were recycled? How many riders participated? What was the cost per return? How many certificates converted into new Eveready purchases? And did the programme collect waste that would otherwise have entered mixed garbage, or merely redirect batteries already headed towards formal recycling?

Without those answers, the green loop remains a handsome circle drawn in a press release.

Zepto’s ₹5,905-Crore Red Number

The programme lands while Zepto is undergoing a different kind of recycling: converting private-market enthusiasm into a public-market proposition.

According to figures disclosed in its updated IPO papers and reported by multiple publications, Zepto’s FY26 operating revenue more than doubled to about ₹22,624 crore from ₹11,110 crore. Its consolidated net loss nevertheless widened 26 per cent to approximately ₹5,905 crore from ₹4,695 crore.

The top line demonstrates ferocious demand. The bottom line demonstrates what satisfying it still costs. Zepto opened dark stores, chased customers, subsidised orders, expanded inventory and fought Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart for frequency. Revenue grew much faster than losses, improving the loss-to-revenue ratio. Its fourth-quarter performance also indicated better economics. These are important signs of operating progress.

₹5,905 crore remains ₹5,905 crore.

Public investors reportedly refused to inherit Zepto’s last private valuation without a substantial haircut. The company, valued at $7 billion in its 2025 funding round, postponed its proposed listing by two to three quarters after a lukewarm response to its valuation. Reports indicated that it would instead seek roughly ₹1,000 crore in bridge or pre-IPO capital and return to the market later.

The delay is not a corporate death certificate. Companies routinely wait for better conditions, stronger numbers or a narrower disagreement with investors. But it punctured one of the founding assumptions of the venture-capital era: that extraordinary growth would automatically protect extraordinary valuation.

The public market looked at speed and asked for economics. That is where reverse logistics becomes strategically interesting.

Can the Return Trip Pay?

Zepto has already built the expensive portion of the system. The dark store exists. The app exists. The rider is already travelling to the household. Adding a collection to an existing delivery should cost less than building a separate waste-retrieval network.

The phrase doing the work is “should cost less”.

“Zepto has already paid to reach the customer’s doorstep. Theoretically, carrying something back allows it to extract more value from the same trip,” says Jai Vardhan, cofounder of startup data intelligence platform TheKredible and Entrackr. But reverse logistics becomes a business only when somebody pays for collection, sorting and compliance. Otherwise, the rider returns with the battery while Zepto retains the bill.

Eveready could pay Zepto for collection because it helps fulfil producer obligations. Recyclers could eventually pay for sufficiently valuable, well-sorted material. Brands might fund take-back programmes as compliance, distribution and marketing infrastructure. Zepto could strengthen customer retention by making the app useful after a product’s life ends, not merely before it begins.

Scale could also reduce the marginal cost. A rider collecting one battery from one isolated home is inefficient. Thousands of existing orders producing predictable return volumes around dark stores begin to resemble a network.

The opposite outcome is equally possible. Every returned object adds handling time. Dark stores designed for rapid dispatch may need segregated storage. Riders may require training and incentives. Contaminated, leaking or incorrectly declared material creates risk. Collection volumes may remain too small to justify the operational burden.

The ten-minute machine is optimised to prevent friction. Waste arrives carrying friction with it.

An IPO Story Painted Green?

It would be lazy to dismiss the programme as greenwashing merely because Zepto wants to return to the stock market. A useful initiative does not become useless when it also improves corporate reputation.

It would be equally lazy to pretend the timing has no reputational value.

IPO candidates sell a future. Zepto’s original future was built around speed, scale and the transformation of urban consumption. Public investors have now asked about losses, capital intensity, competition and the price they are expected to pay for that future.

Battery collection supplies a broader answer. Zepto can present itself as household infrastructure rather than an expensive grocery courier. It can argue that the network built for instant commerce will eventually carry advertising, financial services, brand sampling, returns, recycling and multiple new revenue streams.

“Zepto’s IPO delay showed that public-market investors no longer value speed in isolation,” Vardhan says. Battery collection helps widen the company’s utility and strengthens its sustainability narrative, but a green return journey cannot compensate for red numbers unless it eventually improves the economics of the network.

That is the line separating infrastructure from theatre.

If Zepto publishes collection volumes, proves safe handling, pays riders fairly, expands beyond two cities and develops a repeatable commercial model, the programme could demonstrate that quick commerce’s network has uses far beyond instant delivery.

If the feature disappears after certificates, discounts and launch coverage, the dead battery will have briefly powered an IPO narrative.

Quick Commerce Cleans Up After Itself

The larger opportunity extends well beyond Eveready.

Quick-commerce companies know which neighbourhoods buy batteries, electronics, beauty products, packaged food and household cleaners. They possess hyperlocal demand data, warehouses close to consumers and delivery personnel already entering millions of residential buildings.

Municipal systems have none of that precision. A serious reverse network could collect difficult waste at the moment when convenience is highest. Brands would gain traceable take-back channels. Recyclers would gain aggregated material. Cities would gain an alternative to mixed garbage. Platforms would gain another service to sell.

This possibility also demands boundaries. Riders cannot become unpaid waste collectors. Dark stores cannot become informal hazardous-waste warehouses. Customers cannot be promised recycling when the platform can document only collection. And brands cannot be allowed to convert a tiny take-back experiment into a sweeping claim of environmental virtue.

The test is wonderfully simple: Follow the battery.

From the drawer to the rider. From the rider to the dark store. From the dark store to Eveready. From Eveready to an identified recycler. From the recycler into recovered material. Publish the quantity and the cost.

If the chain survives that journey, Zepto and Eveready will have created something valuable: a habit-level collection system hidden inside an ordinary grocery order.

If it breaks, the certificate will have travelled farther than the battery.

Quick commerce taught India to summon consumption to the doorstep. Its next business may be carrying the consequences away.