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Bolstered by its recent $240 million fundraise, Reliance Retail-backed hyper-local delivery startup Dunzo plans to use the fresh capital to more than double its footprint to 15 cities and also increase the count of so-called ‘dark stores’ to 200 from 75 by December-end, its co-founder and chief executive Kabeer Biswas said.
The funds will also be used to upgrade Dunzo’s technology platform, hire delivery partners, set up dark warehouses and for marketing purposes. “We have around 75 dark stores right now, by the end of the year, we should be at about 200,” Biswas said in an interview. The company is currently present in seven cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Pune.
The dark store business, run under the Dunzo Daily brand, processes grocery delivery once orders are placed online. Currently, this is the biggest focus area for Dunzo, Biswas said that the company is going slow on some other categories such as food delivery.
“In the next 18 months, we will be focusing on this (grocery delivery) category because we believe that it will be at least double of what food delivery has been. The reason being, as a share of wallet, it is a much bigger percentage for Indian customers, frequencies are much higher and average order values are higher and the overall market size is also bigger,” he added.
“The focus is to become the biggest convenience store, and once that is achieved, we will start creating other categories,” he said. As a part of the initiative, the company has already launched Dunzo Daily in Bengaluru, Chennai and Pune.
The other major focus area is Dunzo’s business-to-business (B2B) delivery vertical, wherein it is leveraging its established delivery partner network to offer services to enterprise customers and merchants. The company said its partnership with Reliance Retail, which led the January funding round of $240 million, will offer an edge over competitors in both its business-to-consumer (B2C) and B2B delivery business.
“The delivery partner network that we have built can now be used by enterprises. We are also talking with Reliance Retail to lean on their supply chain. It will give us a distinct advantage over others who want to build these categories because they will have to work from scratch on the supply chain. This partnership will help us launch new stores and scale more rapidly,” said Biswas.
The company is already working with around 20,000 B2B customers, including large enterprises, he added.
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