Bombay : Buoyed by its recent $240 million fundraise, Reliance Retail-backed hyper-local delivery startup Dunzo plans to use the new capital to more than double its footprint in 15 cities and also grow the number of so-called ‘dark stores’ to 200 from 75 at the end of December, said co-founder and chief executive Kabeer Biswas.
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 around 200,” Biswas said in an interview. The company currently has a presence in seven cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Pune. .
The dark store business, run under the Dunzo Daily brand, handles grocery delivery after orders are placed online. Currently this is the biggest area of focus for Dunzo, Biswas said the business is slowing down in some other categories such as food delivery.
“Over the next 18 months, we will be focusing on this category (grocery delivery) as we believe it will be at least double what food delivery has been. The reason is that as a share of wallet it is a much higher percentage for Indian customers, the frequencies are much higher and the average order values are higher and the overall market size is also bigger,” he added.
“The goal is to become the biggest convenience store, and once that’s achieved, we’ll start building other categories,” he said. As part of this initiative, the company has already launched Dunzo Daily in Bengaluru, Chennai and Pune.
The other major area of focus is Dunzo’s business-to-business (B2B) vertical delivery, in which it leverages its established network of delivery partners to offer services to enterprise customers and merchants. The company said its partnership with Reliance Retail, which led January’s $240 million funding round, will provide an advantage over competitors in its business-to-consumer (B2C) and B2B delivery businesses.
“The network of delivery partners that we have built can now be used by companies. We are also talking to Reliance Retail to build on their supply chain. This will give us a clear advantage over others who want to build these categories as they will have to work from scratch on the supply chain. This partnership will help us launch new stores and scale faster,” Biswas said.
The company already works with around 20,000 B2B customers, including large enterprises, he added.
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