The Story
On one fine day sitting at the restaurant, an alumnus of the University of Mumbai, Kabeer Biswas, thought, what if someone does a set of tasks for you, anywhere, anytime. And this is how he founded Dunzo in 2014 along with co-founders Ankur Agarwal, Dalvir Suri, and Mukund Jha, mainly focusing on 24X7 demand delivery service. It started as a small Whatsapp group in Bengaluru and later was transformed into an app-based service delivering items such as cow dung and breast milk, swearing by its services.
Dunzo recognized that urban India places a ‘premium’ on its time and would be willing to pay a fee for outsourcing mundane tasks. Lack of time is the most prominent constraint people face in big cities. It took one step forward by integrating local discovery with local task fulfillment, at core enabling India to-do the tasks on their to-do list.
The problem statement was straightforward – People are busy and shouldn’t need to spend their time doing mundane tasks. Time is limited, and work is unlimited, so why don’t we have someone to complete all our tasks. Keeping this thought in mind, Kabeer and their team focused on the hyperlocal delivery model, an online business model focusing on customers’ needs and meeting them through local offline shops via a digital platform.
Customers’ demands such as grocery, medicine, laundry, pet supplies, health and wellness, gifts, bike rides, pick up and drop, and many more are instantly met. If you forgot some documents at home, Dunzo can get them to your office. It is very helpful for those who can not go out for some reason and want to buy something or complete a task. It has a tie-up with general-stores, Kirana stores, restaurants, and few clothing stores. The business model creates an opportunity to earn money for the younger generation to make money on their available time.
It expanded its wings from headquarter Bengaluru to eight other cities like Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Pune, Chennai, Jaipur, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. It is currently estimated to work with 980 employees, ensuring distribution channels and delivering services are working fine with utmost customer satisfaction with the tag line “Sab Sambhal Lete Hai Hum.” It is estimated to have 30k+ transactions every day and around 1 million transactions in a month.
Dunzo’s operation from a business point of view
Net inflows (NI) = Commission from Merchant – Cost Per Trip (CPT) – User Promo Spend Per Trip + Delivery Fee
It approximately charges as below:
Rs. 40 – 4 km
Rr. 80 – 8 km
Rs. 120 – greater than 8 km
Overall revenue recorded was 3.5 crore in FY 2019, in which 76 lacs from “revenue from operations” 2.7 crore was from other income.
Funds and Partnership
Dunzo received its first funding of US $650,000 in March 2016 from Blume Ventures, Aspada Ventures accompanied by other investors like MD of google Rajan Anandan and continued getting in the future and first direct investment in a startup in India from Google.
Dunzo raised INR 34.56 crore funding by issuing debentures and C1 preference shares to existing investor Alteria Capital in 2019. Under the initiative of Pepsico’s ‘Direct-to-customer,’ Dunzo partnered with Pepsico to deliver snacks such as Lays and Kurkure to customer’s doorstep in May 2020 amidst the covid-pandemic.
Competition
Entering the market was not easy as compared to existing competition in the same area, such as urban clap, big basket, Swiggy Go, Jhutpat and Meratask in Delhi, and Jugnoo in Chandigarh. Despite the retail market’s vast size, they successfully made their foot in the market and sustaining their position.
They believed and focused utmost on customer satisfaction and made sure to deliver the service within 30-45 mins. They also used the latest technology, such as artificial intelligence, for a smooth user interface experience, more enjoyable and pain-free through chat interference. They have also set up strong and sustaining logistics delivery services by collaborating with local merchants, MOM shops, along with other established vendors and merchants.
Marketing the Dunzo Way
The marketing game of Dunzo is right up there; it has created an amazing recall value through an unmatched creative and humorous content strategy.
Unlike the startups entering the blue ocean where no market exists, Dunzo has not made any investment in influencer or celebrity marketing.
- Desi Bollywood References: They make use of Bollywood dialogues, references, and phrases to attract people’s attention.
- Moment Marketing: Dunzo is very creative and right on the money to depict recent happenings and events that are relevant for the nation and the world. Their take on these events are always quite humorous and always catches the raw nerve of the audience.
- Comic Series: Not only the moment marketing but Dunzo has also developed a comic series whose protagonist ‘Dunya’ represents the character that the company has envisaged for itself. The comic series get uploaded on the company’s social media handles with the hashtag #DunyaKiDuniya.
- Meme Marketing: On top of the above amazing strategies, Dunzo has been a consistent follower of memes and marketing through memes.
Through a successful and engaging marketing strategy, it has come to a point where ‘Let’s Dunzo it!’ has become a verb. Just like ‘Let’s Google it!’
Also Read: Dollar Shave Club – How Viral Marketing Created $1 Billion Company
Future Endeavors
Dunzo has been successful in the cities they have been operating so far despite the pre-existing competitions. Recently, Dunzo joined its hands with Google initiative to empower merchants stating ‘making small strong’ campaigns in which local merchants would have free enrollment on the Dunzo platform. The focus is to buy locally and help small businesses to get more customers.
Dunzo is also helping these small businesses with logistics support for the orders and delivery services growing digital adaption. Already there exists a strong network of local merchants in India; Dunzo is enabling them to come online and make their footprints. This collaboration would help Dunzo and small scale businesses build their network together to new customers and move to tier two cities.
Summary
Dunzo is a revolution working in three main streams which includes carrying out purchases from food items to small commodities, helping in transporting things from one point to another, repairing and transaction, which included getting house appliances repaired and having small errands done from laundry, payments and many more. And the journey has just started!
