INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
An Indian startup that is increasingly posing a threat to established food and grocery delivery businesses and e-commerce giants just closed
a new financing round to expand its business in the nation.Bangalore-based Dunzo said today it has raised $45 million from Google, Lightbox
Ventures, STIC Investment and STIC Ventures, and 3L Capital in a new financing round
The round, dubbed Series D, valued the startup at about $200 million, three people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch
The startup has raised $81 million to date.Dunzo, a four-year-old startup, operates an eponymous hyper-local delivery service
Users get access to a wide-range of items across several categories, from grocery, perishables, pet supplies and medicines to dinner from
You can have Dunzo pick up and deliver anything within a city
Forgot your laptop charger at home? Dunzo will bring it to your office
Pune, Gurgaon, Powai, Hyderabad and Chennai
The startup said it will use the fresh capital to expand its technology infrastructure and develop partnerships with small and medium
according to industry estimates
Mom and pop stores and other neighborhood outlets that dot tens of thousands of cities, towns, villages and slums across the country drive
most of the sales in the nation
Dunzo joins a growing number of startups in India that are attempting to help small and micro merchants embrace technology for the first
competitor to food and grocery delivery startups such as BigBasket, Swiggy and Zomato
Dunzo founders told TechCrunch that food category already accounts for a quarter of all deliveries it processes.In recent months, Dunzo has
also started to test delivery of smartphones and other products
It recently tied up with Xiaomi to deliver smartphones to users in select parts of India
Unlike Amazon or Flipkart that take a day or two to deliver a phone, Dunzo was getting the new phones to users in 30 minutes
Dunzo has tested a similar partnership with Puma, executives told TechCrunch.Jayanth Kolla, founder and analyst at research firm Convergence
remains tiny in comparison to the giants whose businesses it is beginning to disrupt
Today, the startup processes about 2 million orders a month, up from about 50,000 early last year
Swiggy and Zomato, in comparison, process more than 3 million orders a day, for instance
And they are also heavily backed.In an interesting turn of events, last month Swiggy announced Go, a service that allows users in select
While Swiggy moves beyond food delivery, Zomato is increasingly trying to assume more control over the ins and outs of the food business.The
11-year-old firm is working on something it internally calls Project Kisan to procure supplies directly from farmers and fishermen,
TechCrunch reported earlier
The company has already set up warehouses to store these supplies in many parts of the country, including South Delhi and Pune.
