Success story of Dunzo – From a WhatsApp group to joining hands with Google

Sometimes, it gets really difficult to leave the house to purchase items for daily purposes. Thanks to the technologies adopted by the online services platforms which have actually made our lives easier than before.

Though India has no shortage of applications providing delivery services, the main problem lies in the inconvenience of having to explore such apps that perfectly fit our requirements. But with the launch of Dunzo, this issue has also been resolved as the platform offers a wide range of daily-use products at just one place.

Dunzo, a company which was started off as just a random business idea on a WhatsApp group, has now become the first Indian company to receive direct funding from Google. Isn’t it amazing? Wondering, how this platform managed to gain such success?

In this post, we will tell you each and everything about Dunzo and its Kabeer Biswas.

Firstly, let’s understand what kind of services Dunzo offers.

About Dunzo

For those who don’t know, Dunzo is a popular slang which means done or finished. The idea behind choosing this name for the company was that the founders wanted to focus on finishing or delegating the work which is assigned to them by their customers.

Dunzo is a hyper-local on-demand delivery service startup which offers all kinds of commodities, be it grocery items or pharmaceutical products. It is associated with various restaurants, clothing brands, healthcare stores etc.

How did it begin?

After Kabeer Biswas’ first venture Hoppr was acquired by Hike Messenger in 2014, he shifted to Bengaluru. As he had a lot of free time to explore new things, for the obvious reasons, he started thinking to launch such kind of service that could work as a to-do-list platform for the people and wrapped up the task for them on its own.

Making his small duplex room the platform’s headquarters, he started publicizing the idea around his friend circle. At first, the company began as mere group of Whatsapp in which the delivery services were properly communicated. To make this venture work, Kabeer went all out as he himself took the responsibility of running errands and completing daily targets.

Though after a point of time, he hired some part-time workers and volunteers to assist him in his business. In 2015, the company successfully touched the figure of 70 orders per day which eventually gave a boost to its popularity in the market. Owing to the surge in demand, the Whatsapp-based platform was later converted into a mobile application in 2016.

Growth in the market

For a company which was started as just WhatsApp group, it is commendable to becoming India’s first tech company to receive funding from Google in 2017. Dunzo has raised a whopping amount of $140 million till date and is aiming to increase that by tapping more investors.

There is no denying in saying that the past two years of pandemic have been very tough for everyone. But Dunzo used them to its advantage. In a bid to make the operations easier for merchants, the company even cut down the commissions for its frequently used products. The platform has now expanded its services in many big cities including, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and others.

From sanitary napkins to a laptop charger, Dunzo delivers all kinds of essential commodities at your doorsteps.

Founders & Team

Born in 1984, Kabeer Biswas had begun his professional career soon after completing his MBA in 2007.  He first joined Bharti Airtel Limited in Rural NPD and was promoted in the Social, Communities and Location Based Services in 2009.

After working with the companies like Videocon Telecommunications Limited, Y2CF Digital Media Private Limited and others, Kabeer finally came up with an idea of launching his own platform. And that’s how Hoppr was founded.

Reason behind the success

Logistics is one of the greatest challenges in India, especially when it comes to the e-commerce companies. And Dunzo, being a hyperlocal delivery platform, was always focused on building a strong and sufficient supply chain. Ultimately, the goal was to deliver all the essential items at a pocket-friendly cost and without compromising the quality of the products.

Unlike its competitors like Swiggy, Zomato, Dunzo provides the option of picking up and dropping packages from one place to another. With the help of this feature, people can send lunchboxes, home-cooked meals, gifts, etc to their friends and family in just one click.

The biggest advantage of using Dunzo delivery app, which has also propelled its success in the market, is that it offers a wide range of services to its customers.

Moreover, Kabeer Biswas’ main agenda behind launching this platform was to ensure that the customers, who are struggling a lot in maintaining a healthy balance in their lives, could get the regular chores done on time, without making much efforts.