What is Dunzo?
Online delivery services have brought about more leisure and excitement into our daily lives. You no longer have the trouble of leaving your home to buy something or taste your favorite food. Thanks to technology, it all comes straight to you. There are various platforms in India that provide the delivery of food, grocery, and more. The trouble is you need to go searching from app to app for the specific requirements. There may be various shops in your city that have everything you need. It would be difficult to move from one spot to another to collect all that you need. Life has gotten so vigorous for us that the simple everyday duties have become so burdensome. So what if there was a single entity that encompasses all these needs?
Dunzo (1) is an online company that delivers food, groceries, and all kinds of commodities. Established in 2014 by Kabeer Biswas, Dunzo has become a common name in the households of cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Jaipur. In the fast-moving world, Dunzo connects you with delivery partners who are nearest to you, thus saving your time and effort. It lets you deliver or pick up items in the shortest time at just the swipe of a finger. Dunzo is almost like a personal assistant who runs errands for you. Their team is always on the move to free you of your every day worries.
Dunzo has its headquarters in Bengaluru, and they also run a bike taxi service in Gurgaon, Haryana. As of now, Dunzo has more than one million users on its platform every month. With the help of thousands of bikes in the major cities, Dunzo does all kinds of tasks for its customers, starting from a rate of 45 rupees per order. Customers are willing to pay this price for the convenience that Dunzo brings to them. This brings in monthly revenue of around one crore rupees. Over the years, Dunzo has an increased number of reorders from customers and a decreased amount of time taken for the delivery.
The birth of Dunzo
The founder of Dunzo, Kabeer Biswas, is an alumnus of the University of Mumbai. He completed his management studies from the Narsee Monjee Institute of management. The co-founders of Dunzo are Ankur Agarwal, Dalvir Suri, and Mulund Jha. Dunzo is not the first enterprise founded by Kabeer. He is also the founder of Hoppr, a company which he later sold to Hike Messenger. Kabeer has also worked for Airtel from 2007 to 2010 in the sales and production department.
After Hoppr was acquired by Hike, Kabeer shifted to Bangalore and had a lot of free time to spend. He roamed around the city for several months, looking for something interesting to do. He started thinking of a service that worked as a to-do list that finished the task on its own. When the idea for Dunzo was born, it was started as a simple WhatsApp group where delivery services could be effectively communicated and carried out. Kabeer would complete the tasks on his own. People were satisfied with this assistance and started talking to their friends and family about it.
The orders included something as simple as getting a cold drink from a nearby shop or getting a home appliance repaired. His friends helped him to spread the word so that more people were attracted to this program. Soon more orders started coming in, and Kabeer could not finish them off all by himself. He started hiring part-time employees and volunteers to carry out the tasks. Later Kabeer and his friends developed the idea into an app-based business that concentrated on regional locales. In 2015, within a year of the commencement of business, Dunzo had been working on more than 70 orders per day.
Initial stages of Dunzo
By the year 2016, the Dunzo app had become functional, and orders were pouring in. They entered into a collaboration with many local shops so that orders could be completed quickly and benefits could be gained for both the parties. Even when there were more numbers of requests than the team could handle, Dunzo allowed the users to place multiple orders. One could give a new task in the middle of an already existing order. This customer-friendly service gained them the loyalty and trust of their clients.
Dunzo regulated its business into three streams. They carried out purchases that included anything from food items to small commodities. They helped in transporting things by grabbing it from one spot and submitting it at another place. The third level was the repairing and transaction, which included getting house appliances repaired or having small errands done like laundry, payments, etc.
Another crucial struggle was to find adequate funds for carrying on with the business. They approached many firms in the country but were not able to raise money from them. After Google invested in the company, they were able to reach a broader population, and it paved the way for more revenue. They also had the freedom to offer additional discounts and offers to the customers thus attracting a better lot. Dunzo later stopped a few of their services such as home duties, secretarial chores, and tasks that involved the government. Focusing more on the food and delivery sector meant more competitors, but Dunzo was ready to handle it.
Funding and Investments
The first round of funding for Dunzo was led in March 2016, and it raised 650,000 dollars. The major investors were Blume Ventures, Aspada Ventures, Sandipan Chattopaday, and Rajan Anandhan, who is the MD of Google India. They conducted another funding round in December 2017 in which Google directly invested in the company along with the existing investors. It was the first time that an Indian business received funding from Google. Google also possessed a 31 percent stake in the company. This round of funding raised an amount of 12 million dollars. The latest funding for Dunzo was in August 2019 when they received an investment of 34.56 crore rupees from Alteria Capital.
