The Silicon Review - Best Business Review Magazine 10 Best Startups of the Year 2019 Asia | Page 48

Arrived with
Scepticism,
Left with
Success
Dunzo
“Chase the vision, not the money, the
money will end up following you.”
- Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO
F
ounded by a quartet
of youngsters in
Bangalore, Dunzo
allows one to find people
who are willing to run
any type of errand - be it
rounding out shopping lists
or picking up and dropping
off chargers forgotten at
home.
Ever since its inception in
January 2015, Dunzo has
become the go-to app for
residents of Bengaluru,
where the company is
headquartered, to get
everything delivered
from laundry, important
documents, a laptop charger
forgotten in the office, to
sanitary napkins, cigarettes,
beer, speakers repaired and
even large potted plants.
What started off as a hobby
on a WhatsApp group has
become the first Indian
company to receive direct
funding from Google to
the tune of $12 million
in December. It recently
expanded into Pune and
Gurgaon and is looking to
reach four more cities by
the end of 2018.
Just Dunzo it!
Dunzo is an app-based
service that lets users ‘hire’
people, who in turn, run
errands for them or carry
out odd jobs on their behalf.
While skeptics may attempt
to start a dialogue on how
this time-saving technology
may be actually abetting
laziness, the Bangalore-
based startup has silenced
critics by drawing the
interest this year of one
of the most successful
businesses in
the world.
Some of the early investors
in Dunzo included Blume
Ventures, Aspada and
angel investors like Rajan
Anandan and Sandipan
Chattopadhyay. Biswas
was joined by Mukund
Jha, Ankur Aggarwal, and
Dalvir Suri as co-founders
in September 2015. The
company migrated from
WhatsApp to its own app
in February 2016 – an
engineering team was
set up and things started
moving fast. By April that
year, traffic started doubling
almost every three weeks.
“We learnt something then,”
said Biswas. “That this is not
a user or demand problem,
but a supply business.”
Biswas moved to Bengaluru
in 2014, after Hike
Messenger bought over
Hopper, a location-based
couponing start-up that he
had co-founded in Gurgaon.
The idea behind Dunzo had
been brewing in his head
for more than a year now,
rooted in the thought, “Why
should I do the things I don’t
enjoy doing?” This was the
gap that he identified in
the market and it became
the cornerstone for Dunzo.