LightBox Ventures May Invest $50Mn In Hyperlocal Services Startup Dunzo

Hyperlocal services company Dunzo is reportedly in talks to raise $50 Mn funding from Mumbai-based venture capital firm Lightbox Ventures. The deal is close to being finalised in the coming one or two months.

Commenting on this, Dunzo told Inc42, “We would like to keep our conversation around our product and what we’re doing to make everything in our cities more accessible for everyone, and not comment on this for now.”

Last month, Dunzo had raised $11.5 Mn funding as part of its ongoing Series C funding round, led by Google, Blume Ventures, Alteria Capital, Greyhound, Beeline.  

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) fromMakeMyTrip’s Deep Kalra and $3.1 Mn (INR 22.49 Cr) Series C funding round from a group of prolific investors in February 2019.

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.

“Dunzo has a different structure, and Lightbox likes these platform businesses to invest in, which is driving conversations,”  a source told LiveMint.  

“These businesses can take in any levels of capital, and growth can be adjusted accordingly. Dunzo seems to have figured out its unit economics, how partners should be incentivised to perform at adequate levels, and are managing customer acquisition cost at a low level,” he added.

Inc42 Media query sent to LightBox Ventures did not elicit a response till the time of publication.

Lightbox Ventures is a consumer tech focused venture capital firm, founded in 2014. The VC firm has announced its $200 Mn third fund in 2018, of which it recently invested $4Mn in a femtech startup NUA.

Lightbox’s portfolio includes online food delivery startup Faasos, automobile marketplace Droom, online travel aggregator Cleartrip, furniture rental startup Furlenco, mobile adtech startup InMobi, and GPS navigation company MapMyIndia, among others.

The fund saw a successful, huge exit from edtech startup Embibe when Reliance Industries invested $180 Mn in the company, buying out 72.69% stake of investors, including Lightbox.

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