GOOGLE-BACKED DELIVERY FIRM DUNZO SEEKS $150 MN FUNDING

MUMBAI: Dunzo Digital Private Ltd, a delivery startup backed by Google and operating in eight Indian cities, aims to double the amount of capital it has raised so far to extend its reach across the country and become a $1 billion revenue business in the next two years.

The app, which connects lowcost couriers to thousands of individual merchants, has lured Indians with its rapid delivery of items ranging from groceries to parcels in traffic-clogged cities. The Bengaluru-based firm has so far raised about $140 million to date and aims to tap investors for another $150 million in 2021.

“The expansion starts next year at full pace, so we’ll raise the capital this year, but it gets deployed only next year,” Kabeer Biswas, Dunzo’s 36-year-old chief executive officer, said in an interview.

The company may expand to two more cities in 2021, then build toward a presence in 20 urban areas by mid-2023, he said. It has also started offering 15-minute deliveries for a range of 2,000 commonly-sought-after items.

Dunzo was founded in 2014 and started out as a WhatsApp service, before becoming an app where customers typically pay about $6 per order.

It’s tapping into growing Internet usage and accessibility in India, where tech and consumer startups are flourishing as the number of smartphone users nears 1 billion. E-commerce has been the quickest growing channel for fast-moving consumer good products in recent years, and now accounts for about 5% of all such sales, according to Jefferies.