A one-stop-app for everything: the curious case of Indore-based Zootout

How many apps do you have on your mobile phone? Too many, it seems these days, and yet they are all just not enough. What if you could call for a plumber, order food, book a salon appointment, get a doctor’s appointment or call for grocery using just one app? Zootout promises to be a one-stop-app.

It is a chat platform offering unlimited scope of customising any kind of order/service under the sun.

If this application rings a bell, you will remember a story published on YourStory back in 2012 when Zootout used to be a 'hyperlocal search engine for food and lifestyle'. However, the brand has come full circle since. Apart from Cofounder and CEO Sukrat Ray, Zootout has two new Co-founders Pranav Singhi and Sumay Dubey and a brand new spin on its original idea.

Sukrat says, “When I had started off developing Zootout, I had a different orientation. Eventually, all the Co-founders felt a different calling and we parted ways amicably chasing our own passions. I have now completely restructured Zootout. The market is flooded with apps for specific tasks, but Zootout is up to provide a single-stop solution where the functionalities of numerous such apps can be accessed from a single application.”

An omnipotent chat platform

Zootout is a chat-based mobile commerce platform with a simple vision to provide a one-stop solution to the users to get things done faster. This is also a platform to local businesses where they can easily connect with the user to drive more revenue to their business.

“Zootout enables smart search and discovery of local restaurants, cafes, salons, doctors and other businesses. It provides chat assistance with first response in less than a minute, simplifies ordering and query tracking, offers coupons at one place and allows customisable action buttons for each user,” explains Sumay.

Sukrat adds, “Zootout is not just a personal assistant app, it is a platform. It is intelligently designedto take the personal assistant experience a step further.” So every query, say, for a hotel booking or grocery order, gets converted into a chat window where the chat expertschat in real time understanding the details, asking questions and processing the request.

Zootout has started with local commerce and services on September 01, 2015 and has reached 10,000+ app downloads on Android and iPhone. “We are aiming to increase this base to one lakh users by the end of this year,” says Co-founder Pranav Singhi.

Based out of Indore, Zootout had raised a seed fund of about Rs one crore earlier this year from HNIs and is now looking for a pre-series A fund for further expansion. Zootout currently lists 200+ services in 12 categories including restaurants, food, hotels, salons, plumber etc., across nine cities including Indore,Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune, Noida, Greater Noida, Gurgaon, and Hyderabad.

The three founders and a meticulous process

Sukrat is a serial entrepreneur. From running a youth magazine in his teens, to leaving a TCS joband founding Khaopiyo.com to an advertising company, this 30-year-old has had a varied experience. While 24-year-old Pranav,who is a BCA graduate from Noida, is their cost-saving founding member, 26-year-old Sumay is a passionate coding expert from IET, Indore University who refused a package of Rs 32 lakh to join the Zootout founding team.

Together, they built a meticulous process with a team of 30 people including a data team that collects data of vendors, and verifies the details along with a chat team of eight people which engages with the end customers.

What’s their revenue model?

Zootout has a marketing platform for local businesses to help them manage their profile, track orders, offer redemptions, user conversations and even send special offers to the users who had previously interacted with them on the platform. Sukrat adds, “We are their ‘sales partner’ for enabling them to get profits from selling their services. Zootout is a combination of both technology and human intelligence.”

Pranav explains that the robust app gives them the independence to work on multiple, carefully developed revenue streams keeping in mind each category and service. “We currently earn revenue by promoting offers of local business and processing bookings and orders but we are open to other revenue sources,” he adds.

Zootout competes with personal assistant apps like Lookup, Helpchat, Haptik and Goodservice. The Indore-based startup has plans of expanding to three more cities.

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