A concierge startup steps in where Amazon and other ecommerce giants failed

Image from Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel

As internet access improves and more people get smartphones, ecommerce startups are placing massive bets on India. Global giant Amazon competes against homegrown hopeful Flipkart, which is tailed closely by Snapdeal. There are many others, including Shopclues, fashion site Myntra, and furniture startup Pepperfry. Their joint challenge? Proving to hundreds of millions of shoppers that buying online is more convenient, cheaper, and provides more options than buying things in person.

The problem is, India is unique, with challenges that countries like the United States don’t present. Visit any city and you’ll see hundreds of small shops dotting every corner. They come in all shapes and sizes and sell everything one can imagine – medicine, toothpaste, gifts, used computers. All take cash, some take cards, and a few have even started adopting e-wallets. What’s most important is that they interact with their customers enough to know them well and have conventionally bent over backwards to serve them – like delivering goods to doorsteps or installing electricals within houses.

That’s where the enigmatic and oft-quoted India-specific challenge appears. As ecommerce companies pump money into winning over customers that aren’t top-tier and easy targets, it’s clear that a major chunk of their competition comes from offline stores.

Tech is not to be treated as a blessing, co-founder Kabeer Biswas explains – especially for those that are already operating well without it.

Right in the midst of these poles is Dunzo, a small startup that works out of a converted home in Indiranagar, Bangalore. At any hour of the day, you’re guaranteed to find at least one of its forty employees typing away at a keyboard, ready to complete a task.

I first came across Dunzo when a friend needed chairs for her balcony. We looked online but didn’t want to wait days for the order to be delivered, or bet on shaky logistics that might mean that the package would come at odd hours – or worse, would never come. We found local places on listings site Justdial but it was hard to tell which were open, or which weren’t located in shady parts of town, or which would fit with our busy schedules. That’s when someone suggested Dunzo – I downloaded it on a Sunday morning, chatted with a representative for 5 minutes, and had the chairs delivered by that afternoon.

The chairs came from a store closeby – Dunzo charged me just thirty rupees (half a dollar) on top of the retail price to have it delivered, because it was less than three kilometers away. The representative I chatted with sent me photos of chair designs I might be interested in. I insisted on the cheapest possible option. I chose to pay cash-on-delivery, but could have gone for net banking or credit and debit payments.

Impressed, I had a friend connect me with the team and set up a meeting with co-founder Kabeer Biswas. “We give you superpowers,” he said to me, staunchly.

Demand first

Kabeer Biswas is a walking, talking encyclopedia of Bangalore. He knows everything there is to know about the landlocked southern city, and is reasonably embarrassed when I bring up places he doesn’t know. His co-founders are Ankur Aggarwal, Dalvir Suri, and Mukund Jha.

Dunzo first started out as a WhatsApp group, he reminisces, an experiment for Kabeer and his friends after quitting their jobs. It was as beta as beta testing gets and limited to a few customers. The demand was enough that Kabeer and others began to get stressed out – which meant that it was high time that it was turned into an app.

The first and most important takeaway that he provides me with is that their initial strategy was to bring customers to merchants. This, he explains, has made all the difference. “Instead of going to merchants and telling them – ‘hey, we have this great idea, sign up with our tech,’ we just went to them saying – ‘hey, we have customers that want to buy from you. We’ll do the payments and the fulfillment’.”

Photo credit: Chris Schmich.

Easy, breezy logistics and payments

Chatty

Will it work?