Google is writing a check to another startup in India. The Android maker, which last year unveiled a $ 10 billion fund to invest in the world's second largest internet market, said on Tuesday it is participating in a $ 40 million investment round from the hyperlocal delivery startup. Dunzo, a Bangalore-based company that has also previously supported.
Dunzo, five, said that Google, Lightbox, Evolvence, Hana Financial Investment, LGT Lightstone Aspada, and Alteria, among others, participated in its E Series funding round, which brings it up to $ 121 million.
Dunzo operates a hyper-local delivery service of the same name in nearly a dozen cities in India, including Bangalore, Delhi, Noida, Pune, Gurgaon, Powai, Hyderabad and Chennai. Users have access to a wide range of items in different categories, from groceries, perishable goods, pet supplies and medicines to dining in neighborhood shops and restaurants.
According to industry estimates, e-commerce accounts for less than 3% of all retail sales in India. The mom and pop stores and other neighborhood outlets that dot tens of thousands of cities, towns, villages, and slums across the country drive the majority of sales in the nation. How Dunzo has grown presents a challenge for ecommerce companies like Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart, as well as local food and grocery delivery startups like Swiggy, Zomato, BigBasket, and Grofers. Several people also use Dunzo to collect and move random items such as a laptop charger or wallet or lunch box from one point in the city to another.
"As merchants go digital, Dunzo helps small businesses on their digital transformation journey to support business recovery," said Caesar Sengupta, VP, Google, in a statement. "Through our India Digitization Fund, we are committed to partnering with Indian innovative startups to build a truly inclusive digital economy for the benefit of all."
Kabeer Biswas, CEO and co-founder of Dunzo, the startup has increased its annual business for the gross value of goods to around $ 100 million. (GMV used a popular metric that several ecommerce companies relied on to demonstrate their growth, however, it's one of the nonsensical ways to gauge the growth of a startup. Most businesses have stopped using GMV. Also , when a startup speaks the GMV language, it traditionally means that they are far from close to profitability, which is true in the case of Dunzo.)
"Dunzo's mission rang louder than ever in 2020. We were blown away by everything merchants and users have started to depend on the platform for. We truly believe we are writing a playbook on how to build hyperlocal businesses with a sustainable unitary economy. and capital accountability. As a team, we are more focused than ever on empowering local merchants to get closer to their users and create one of the most loved consumer brands in the country, "Biswas said in a statement.
Google, which invested $ 4.5 billion in Jio Platforms last year, recently backed the social news app Dailyhunt and Glance, a part of the advertising giant InMobi Group that is aggressively expanding ways to populate content. on the lock screen of Android users. Google is also in talks with local social media ShareChat and alone could invest more than $ 100 million in the Indian startup, ProWellTech reported earlier this month. Speeches about Google's interest in ShareChat have also previously been reported by local media houses Economic Times and ET Now.
