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• Visible light-promoted C3-ethoxycarbonylmethylation of imidazopyridines and ethyl diazoacetate. • Application in facile accessing Zolpidem. • Simple to operate. • Abstarct. • A highly efficient and straightforward C3-ethoxycarbonylmethylation of imidazopyridines with ethyl diazoacetate via a visible light-promoted C - H bond functionalization was developed. Various C3-ethoxycarbonylmethylated imidazopyridines could be efficiently synthesized in moderate to good yields and the importance of the products has been illustrated by their convenient transformation into imidazopyridine-based drug molecules. The reaction can be extended to various diazo compounds and Zolpidem could be successfully synthesized in one step by reacting commercially available intermediate with diazo N,N-dimethylacetamide using this visible light-induced reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]