Rujul Zaparde is the CEO and co-founder of Zip, a groundbreaking AI-powered intake and procurement orchestration platform that is reshaping the way businesses handle procurement.
Since its founding in 2020, Zip has saved companies over US$4.4bn, offering a seamless procurement experience for some of the world’s top organisations, including OpenAI, Discover, and Sephora.
As Rujul explains: “We invented the world's leading intake-to-pay solution bringing a consumer-grade user experience to B2B purchasing, radically simplifying the complex process.”
Before starting Zip, Rujul and his co-founder Lu Cheng worked together as product leaders at Airbnb, where they encountered first-hand the challenges of B2B procurement: “I remember going through the process of being so confused about creating a PR in one system, uploading a contract into another system, and submitting six or seven intakes across this process,” Rujul recalls.
The inefficiencies they faced sparked the idea for Zip. Rujul and Cheng realised there had to be a better way to manage procurement processes.
Zip’s mission is clear: to help businesses procure faster, with less risk, and at the best value. “Our vision is to become the global standard for business spend, empowering every organisation to seamlessly access the resources they need for peak performance," says Rujul.
At its core, Zip simplifies the entire procurement process from intake to payment, integrating intake, sourcing, vendor management, and AP automation into a single platform. This holistic approach reduces risk, increases efficiency and enables businesses to focus on growth.
Reflecting on his career, Rujul notes that his journey began long before Zip. “I dropped out of college to start my first company, FlightCar. We would give you free airport parking by renting out your car to somebody else, fully insured.”
This entrepreneurial spirit would serve him well when facing the challenges that led to Zip's creation. He and Cheng realised the procurement challenges they were facing were not unique to their company, but part of a larger industry-wide issue.
The pandemic was the back-drop of Zip's early development. Launched in 2020 amid global uncertainty, Zip teams made use of Facebook Portal devices to stay connected, creating a virtual office environment where engineers could listen in on customer calls, learning firsthand about customer pain points. “I spent a lot of time talking to customers and our engineers could actually listen directly to what the customer was saying,” Rujul adds.
“That helped them learn about the problem as we were seeking product-market fit.”
One of Zip’s defining milestones came about a year and a half into the company’s journey when the team clearly defined the category they were pioneering — intake and procurement orchestration: “Not that the problem we were tackling changed, but we just didn’t articulate it that way.”
This realisation allowed them to refine their product offering and create a new category in the procurement space.
Since then, Zip has experienced remarkable growth. “Four years ago, it was just me and Lu,” Rujul says.
“Today, we have offices in the US, Canada, and the UK, and are hiring aggressively across the EMEA region.” The company’s product suite has expanded from intake and procurement orchestration to a broader “intake-to-pay” offering, with AI-powered features like document extraction and invoice coding revolutionising the industry.
Looking ahead, Rujul’s excitement is palpable. “We’re not just streamlining procurement; we’re enabling businesses to make smarter, data-driven decisions about their spending,” he explains. With Zip’s recent recognition as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Spend Orchestration and its expanding global footprint, Rujul is confident that Zip’s in-house product development will continue to drive innovation and shape the future of procurement technology.
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