Why We Invested in OZi

We are delighted to announce our investment into OZi, a Quick Commerce play in the Baby Care space, led by Amit Sah (ex Oyo, Ola, Pristyn Care), one of the top ops minds we have met. 

Please read on for our thesis on the vertical Quick Commerce segment, and why Baby Care is one of the best vertical segments, and why OZi and Amit stand out!

‘Quick India movement’!

There is no going back from the current Quick Commerce (QCom) wave — it has permanently changed user preferences. Today, around 60% of buyers expect same-day deliveries, and more than 30% prioritize receiving their orders within two hours1. This shift has enabled Quick Commerce to capture a double-digit share of India’s e‑commerce market. The shift is spurring every existing ecom player to launch quicker delivery as well. We are moving to Quickish Commerce effectively.

Above chart from the Indus Valley Report 2025, where we covered Quick Commerce at length.

Vertical QCom is inevitable!

Just as we saw the rise of vertical ecom plays like Myntra, Meesho, FirstCry, and 1MG to complement horizontal plays like Flipkart and Amazon, we are likely to see a similar pattern in QCom too, where new-age vertical quick commerce players will compete with the incumbents in their respective categories.

At Blume, over the last few months, we have studied various verticalisation plays and categories, and we have come to realise that there are certain factors required for a vertical × quick commerce model to work.

The criteria for success in Vertical QCom!

For any vertical player to succeed, three elements are critical:

1/ High repeatability – ensuring customers regularly return to the platform. This is because there are broadly 16m power shoppers (in India). Everybody is chasing them, and hence CAC (Cost of Acquisition of Customers) is usually high for Indian startups. If your category or platform is not designed for repeatability, you are ngmi.

Via Inc42 State of Startup Ecosystem Report September 2024

2/ Long-tail SKU requirement – customers require a wide range of items, often taste-driven, which makes it hard for a horizontal player to compete.

3/ Backward integration feasibility – enabling them to launch private labels in the future. Eventually, margins will need to be expanded, and the best vertical players/​retailers are disguised brand owners / private label purveyors.

In quick commerce, two additional conditions become necessary:

• Density of orders – hyperlocal order clustering is essential to make 30-minute or bunched 60-min deliveries viable in a unit-economic positive manner.
• High margins and Average Order Value (AOV) – since delivery costs are higher in QC, margins and AOV must be sufficient to absorb logistics costs.

Why Baby Care is the best Vertical QCom play today!

The above led us to conclude that there are two categories that can leverage verticalisation the most: Fashion and Baby Care. They have high AOV, sufficient margins, the ability to build for long-tail use cases, and scope for private label. Additionally, Baby Care wins on higher repeatability. Pharma, which we evaluated only wins on repeatability and long-tail and fails on the other three.

We also see:

• High Market Fragmentation: Less than 7% of the baby care market is organized. While the market was earlier dominated by mom-and-pop shops, the trend is now shifting towards more organized retail. Several smaller-scale chains exist, but only one large incumbent exists (FirstCry), which operates on a franchise-based business model and is also going through its own set of challenges — opening up a perfect window of opportunity.
• Unique Combination of Recurring Use Case and Long-Tail, Taste-Driven Commerce: Kids’ commerce has a unique mix of daily/​weekly essential items and more taste-driven purchases in categories like apparel and toys. The regular needs keep customers hooked, while the long-tail demands create greater value for a dedicated solution — since horizontal platforms can only hold a limited amount of inventory. This ensures a platform can maintain high-density orders because of the recurring use case, while also capturing higher margins by serving a long tail of SKUs.
• Weak Brand Recall in Kids’ Platforms: Unlike fashion, where people know which specific brands they want to buy, parents often graduate into this category without a strong brand preference. This creates an opportunity for a platform to become the brand people associate with anything related to their child, rather than with a specific product brand.

The existing leader in vertical commerce is fundamentally operating as a private label trading play importing from China, and is not geared to cater to the new wave of urban parents. Their existing playbook is designed for a certain demographic and delivery time, and will not be easy to optimise for new-age parents in urban India.

All of this makes us believe that a kids and baby-care quick commerce platform is best positioned to ride these tailwinds and capture outsized value — and in that category, we feel OZi has the strongest right to win.

Why OZi is the best bet in Baby Care / Vertical QCom

Quick commerce sits at the broadest intersection of operational excellence and data intelligence — being able to deliver within an hour while also knowing what stock to keep in which dark store. On both these fronts, we see the OZi team, led by Amit Sah, as best suited to capture this opportunity.

Team OZi

We first met Amit when we invested in his first startup in mid-2024, Zoplar, a refurbished medical device marketplace focused on serving small and medium-sized hospitals. We were impressed by his operational rigor, his attitude of getting things done no matter what, and his ability to always find a way. Unfortunately, things did not work out well for Zoplar, as a sudden regulatory change by Govt of India banning import of used medical equipment made it very hard for the business to exist, and the founders (Amit and Umesh) decided to shut shop.

But through all of this, we saw for ourselves the depth of learnings Amit brought to the table when it came to operations. We would easily place him in the top 0.1% of operational talent in the country, with over a decade of experience. He was Head of International Business at Pristyn Care, and also held senior operational leadership roles at Ola and Oyo, where he led international market launches and expansions.

We were equally impressed by Amit’s ability to attract top talent at OZi, with folks joining who have worked at many of India’s largest businesses, including Urban Company, Cars24, and Zomato, to name a few.

This sentiment is also echoed by leaders who have worked with Amit before:

“Amit has demonstrated his ability to attract top talent and scale early revenues. His relentless drive and continuous learning appetite position him as the right founder to make OZi succeed.” — Gaurav Ajmera, founder Vetic, ex CRO at OYO & Ex-CBO, Pristyn Care

“Amit is a seasoned operator with speed and bias for action as his superpowers. He is attacking a market that is seeing an explosion in brands and SKUs for consumers. Amit brings the right mix of operational excellence and product vision to deliver exceptional service in this space.” Abhinav Sinha — Founder Kluisz, Ex Global COO at OYO

OZi right now!

OZi is now live in Gurgaon. Parents can order directly from the OZi app — available on the Play Store and App Store — to get everything their child needs, from diapers, baby formula, and grooming essentials to apparel, toys, and more. In short, the entire world of baby care, delivered at your doorstep.

Here is how the app looks!

Download the OZi app now — link

We are excited to support OZi in its seed round, and look forward to working with Amit and the founding team to build what we see as India’s biggest baby care brand in the coming years.