Deep Kalra invests Rs 3 Cr in Dunzo as part of Series C funding

Hyperlocal concierge app Dunzo has raised funding of Rs 3 crore from Deep Kalra, MakeMyTrip Founder. This Rs 3 crore is a part of dunzo's $30 million Series C funding.

Last year, during the same time, Dunzo had raised its Series B funding of $12.3 million by Google, making it the search-engine giant's first investment in an Indian startup. From a WhatsApp-based model, this hyperlocal “task running” business evolved into a rudimentary app, and now has over 80 percent of its tasks run by machines and algorithms.

Dunzo was founded in 2015 by Kabeer Biswas, Ankur Aggarwal, Dalvir Suri, and Mukund Jha.

In October this year, Dunzo completed over one million transactions, and completes an average of 30,000 transactions everyday. Since the last fundraise it now has operations in Gurugram, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai. It has also piloted bike-taxi services in Gurugram.

The on-demand business is a tough one – the frequency of the business needs to be high, there needs to be a strong liquidity of demand and supply. An analyst, on condition of anonymity, had then said: “The product is great, the way the operations run is seamless, but the question arises in the scale.”

Also read: Dunzo has figured out how to make urban India lazy (and why we're loving it)

Dunzo currently claims to make Rs 25 off each transaction.

The space is rapidly expanding. Last week, Swiggy announced on its blog that the platform will now go beyond online food delivery with the launch of Swiggy Stores, where it offers customers the convenience of ordering anything from any store across the city.

Swiggy's model of Swiggy Stores is exactly like Dunzo's. Since its last fund raise of $1 billion in December 2018, Swiggy has been looking to further strengthen its tech efforts and focus on an AI-driven delivery platform for hyperlocal and on-demand delivery. Earlier this month, Swiggy had also announced its first technology-driven acquihire of Kint.io, a Bengaluru-based AI startup.