Hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo on Friday said that it has raised $45 million in a fresh round of funding from Lightbox, Google, 3L Capital, and STIC Investment and STIC Ventures. The company plans to utilise the funds to ramp up its presence across the country.
The Bengaluru-based startup that allows users to outsource their delivery needs within a city, today has a presence across nine cities including Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, and Pune. “This capital will further Dunzo’s vision to be the largest commerce platform in the country. This round of investment stems from Dunzo’s 40x growth in the last 18 months and a business model that focuses on unit profitability,” the company said, adding that it clocks in more than two million deliveries month-on-month.
“Over the last year, we have built a model that understands Indian cities deeply and empowers offline commerce to deliver to consumers instantly. We believe in giving local merchants a fighting chance while creating sustainable earning opportunities for delivery partners,” said Kabeer Biswas, CEO and co-founder, Dunzo, which started in 2015 as a WhatsApp beta service.
In the last few years Biswas along with Mukund Jha, Dalvir Suri, and Ankur Aggarwal has built the startup into a leading hyperlocal e-commerce platform. The Dunzo app connects the user with the nearest delivery person who can make purchases, pick up items from any store or restaurant, and deliver to the customer’s doorstep. It delivers almost everything from grocery, food, medicine, stationery, courier to any sundry items.
The startup believes that its next phase of growth will come from digitising India’s offline commerce in the top 25 cities in the country.
“Dunzo has been a crucial spoke in driving the hyperlocal wheel and has the potential to go the distance in becoming the largest commerce platform in India,” said Dave Leyrer, co-founder and managing partner, 3L.
“From our first investment in Kabeer and team in 2015-16, we’ve seen Dunzo’s base of 10,000 WhatsApp users scale to a multi-city model delivering delight to millions of monthly transactions...With Google as an early believer and investor, we’ve added some world-class investors to the cap table,” said Karthik Reddy, managing partner, Blume Ventures.
Dunzo is backed by Google, the Internet giant’s first direct investment in an Indian startup.
