Bengaluru’s popular hyperlocal and delivery startup has launched operations in Chennai. Any task you want to get done, from picking up something you forgot somewhere, to getting you food from a restaurant, or medicines and even grocery, Dunzo will do it for you.
This is the fourth city Dunzo has entered after it launched operations in Delhi and Hyderabad earlier in October. It launched operations in Pune last year.
We’re on the move again. This time towards the coastal side. Any guesses to where next?
— Dunzo (@DunzoIt) October 19, 2018
Not on Dunzo yet? Download app now: https://t.co/om31vRXLcK#Dunzo #DunzoIt #NewCityLaunch pic.twitter.com/HybB0Qq2wp
According to a report in Times of India, Dunzo will be working with Chennai-based hyperlocal delivery service Genie, whose operations are on the same lines of Dunzo’s. The entire team of Genie in Chennai will now be a part of Dunzo, which will leverage Genie’s market knowledge in Chennai to improve Dunzo’s user experience in the city.
Genie was founded in 2015 by Rakesh Mani, Sreekesh Krishnan and Parth Shah. While the startup told TOI that it has 1,500 delivery personnel and has completed over 250k tasks, the journey hasn’t been easy for Genie.
In March 2017, Genie nearly shut shop when it had halted services owing to a dearth of funds. But it raised an angel round of funding of $250k by May 2017 from some High Net Worth Individuals and resumed operations.
Dunzo, on the other hand, was founded in Bengaluru in 2015 by Ankur Aggarwal, Dalvir Suri, Mukund Jha and Kabeer Biswas. Initially launched on WhatsApp as a service running errands for users, Dunzo now handles over 3,500-4,000 tasks a day and in December told TNM that it wanted scale it up to one lakh tasks by the end of this year.
This startup, which prides itself for being frugal, caught everyone’s attention in December 2017 when Google lead a $10-12 million round in Dunzo. This was Google’s first direct investment in an Indian startup.
While at the start, Dunzo saw immense competition from tens of startups trying to do the same thing, it managed to survive the race and has also reached a break-even in Bengaluru.