Hyperlocal Services Startup Dunzo May Raise $50 Mn In Fresh Funding

Hyperlocal services startup, Dunzo, is reportedly in talks to raise a fresh round of funding of about $50 Mn.

The latest round of funding comes close on the heels of Dunzo’s INR 80 Cr ($11.5 Mn) fund raise as part of its ongoing Series C funding round, led by Google, Blume Ventures, Alteria Capital, Greyhound, Beeline earlier this month, according to a Ministry of Corporate Affairs filing accessed by Inc42.

“Dunzo has been finding it difficult to raise money from financial investors. There were some initial talks with Zomato for a potential acquisition, but that didn’t move forward,” two sources have told LiveMint.

The Bengaluru-based company was founded by Ankur Aggarwal, Dalvir Suri, Mukund Jha, and Kabeer Biswas in 2015. Aspada Investments-backed Dunzo is an AI chat-based hyperlocal app through which users can create to-do lists and collaborate with vendors.

The users can avail services such as shipping of packages, buying products, repairing stuff, and home services. Further, the app can also be used to do personal tasks including paying bills, car services, repairing appliances among others.

Dunzo claimed to have facilitated over 1 Mn transactions with a daily average of 30K transactions till October 2018. The company had raised $422K (INR 3 Cr) from MakeMyTrip’s Deep Kalra and $3.1 Mn (INR 22.49 Cr) Series C funding round from a group of prolific investors in February 2019.

Hyperlocal Delivery Market

India’s hyperlocal market is expected to reach over $317.4 Mn (INR 2,306 Cr) by 2020. Other notable hyperlocal delivery players in the space include Swiggy Stores, Alibaba-backed Bigbasket, and Softbank’s portfolio Grofers. Further, personal assistant bot startups such as Reliance-acquired Haptik, Hike’s Natasha, and HelpChat are also operating in the hyperlocal services space.

Indian travel startup MakeMyTrip had also forayed in the hyperlocal services space through its ‘Experiences’ feature. This new feature will enable users to explore leisure activities such as food walks, daycation, museum visits, and sporting events.

With the launch of Swiggy Stores, the foodtech Unicorn Swiggy has forayed into hyperlocal delivery space. Swiggy Store will enable the delivery of flowers and vegetables to health and supplements to its users.

Swiggy had shared plans to collaborate with more than 3.5K stores in the national capital region, including merchants such as Ferns and Petals, Le Marche, Needs Supermarket, Licious, Zappfresh, MomsCo, Apollo and Guardian Pharmacy.

According to MCA filings accessed by Inc42 in March 2019, Bengaluru-based BigBasket was close to completing its $150 Mn funding round with investments from Alibaba, Mirae Asset Global Investments and the UK government-backed CDC Group.

Dunzo was part of Inc42’s 2018 edition of the India’s most innovative startups list— 42Next by Inc42.