Big Basket
Hari Menon, Co-founder and CEO
Groceries at the click of a button? Who would have thought of it? But for the co-founders of Big Basket, it was the one area that had remained untapped despite the e-commerce boom. With years of experience heading a successful grocery chain, till they sold it to the Aditya Birla group, Hari Menon, Abhinay Choudhary, Vipul Parekh, V.S. Ramesh and V.S. Sudhakar decided to grab the opportunity and launch what is now one of the country’s most successful online grocery stores.
“The eco-system was ready for an e-commerce boom and given our background and understanding of supply chain in this sector, we decided to set up Big Basket,” says Hari. While the company formally launched in 2011, in Bangalore, it wasn’t until earlier this year that they began to expand and gain recognition. “It was a conscious decision to first set up a strong back-end operation system. We wanted to make the process seamless before we ventured into different markets,” he explains.
By late 2014 they were operational in Hyderabad and by early this year they had begun delivering groceries in Chennai, Pune and NCR — all within a span of four months.
As of year end, Big Basket has expanded operations to 12 cities and according to Hari, by January 2016 they will be up and about in as many as 28 cities, including 20 tier-II cities.
With several other players entering the fray, Big Basket has managed to remain the market leader and Hari credits this to their understanding of the sector and quality. “That and the fact that we were the first to enter this particular sector has certainly helped us stay ahead,” he smiles.
The company, which recently introduced the 60-minute delivery option, is looking to increase customer satisfaction by introducing their latest feature — the speciality store marketplace. “People will always rely on neighbourhood stores for specific things like meat or bakery items. Our new feature will now let them choose to have products delivered from these very stores through us,” explains Hari.
Swiggy
Nandan Reddy, Co-founder
Want to eat your favourite dish from your favourite restaurant? Just pick up your smartphone. With Swiggy entering the market, with their no minimum order feature and a wide network of restaurants, ordering in has only gotten more hassle-free. Started by Nandan Reddy, Sriharsha Majety and Rahul Jaimini, the latest entrant in the food delivery sector has managed to win smiles across cities in a short span of time.
“I’d credit that to our commitment to deliver on time and our network with restaurants,” says Nandan Reddy. Incidentally, the trio was initially running an aggregator of courier companies. “But we wanted to build something hyperlocal and the food sector is a big one. We started operations in the Koramangala area of Bangalore after having tied up with 25 of the best restaurants there. The growth has been phenomenal. The fact that we have complete control over logistics helps us retain quality. We don’t have a minimum order criterion and on an average we deliver meals in 37 minutes,” he explains.
While he says he cannot pinpoint a particular turning point in the company’s journey, he believes it has been a process of constant evolution. “It was only after we had consolidated our base in Bangalore that we began to expand. Today, we have a presence in eight cities. Since we handle everything from taking orders and delivering meals without delegating to a third party it helps us stay on top of our game,” says Nandan.
As of now, Swiggy is focussing on consolidating itself in the top eight markets that it has a presence in, ensuring better technology, better catalogue of restaurants and an even better delivery time.
Oyo Rooms
Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO
During his travels across India, Ritesh Agarwal realised that there was no set standard of service and amenities that travellers could expect from hotels, leading him to strike upon the idea of standardising hotel accommodation. Noting a trust deficiency among customers when it came to booking hotels remotely, Ritesh started Oyo Rooms, a branded hotel network, to offer customers a predictable, affordable and an accessible experience. Since its launch in May 2013, with a personal investment and a grant he received as a Thiel Fellow (created by PayPal founder Peter Thiel, which provides college dropouts under 22 with $1,00,000 to implement their ideas), Oyo’s valuation has multiplied 15 times this year, with the network now covering 160 Indian cities through 40,000 rooms in 4,000 hotels. Ritesh says that the turning point in their journey came when, “SoftBank’s $100 million investment helped cement our reputation as a start-up with a promise. Close on the heels of this, we were listed by New York Times among the next 50 potential unicorns (a start-up with a valuation in excess of one billion U.S. dollars).”
Having consolidated their position in the market, the company is now looking to focus on fundamentals. “We have a strong focus on unit economics and in 2016 we will build further on strong business fundamentals. On the customer side, we are continuously making enhancements to our app and activating new partnerships to make their travel experience seamless through the OYO app,” adds Ritesh.
Haptik
Aakrit Vaish, Co-founder and CEO
With messaging becoming the primary form of communication a few years ago, Aakrit Vaish realised the medium had potential beyond regular communication. After toying with the idea of a chat-based customer support and realising that users preferred a one-stop solution for their needs, he started Haptik, a personal assistant that relies on a team of experts using instant messaging to help users across multiple categories, such as movies, food, travel, recharges, shopping, gifts and repairs. Starting off with a seed capital of $60,000, Haptik went on to secure $1 million from Kalaari Capital. With over 5, 00,000 downloads and 1, 25,000 active users, Haptik employs a team of 200 experts to handle chats. It is now in the process of closing another round of funding to enhance capabilities in what is turning into a hotly-contested segment, with even tech-heavyweights like Facebook set to enter the personal assistant fray in the near future. According to Aakrit, it was the launch that changed things for them. “Even though we had the idea four years ago, we were not sure how it would be used by people and sceptical about its potential. But when we finally launched two years ago, the response was so overwhelming that even I was handling chats late into the day in office. That is when we knew that whatever happened, we had a platform to build a sustainable business upon,” he says.
The company is now focusing on user acquisition. “We have been analysing user behaviour and want to develop robust technologies and achieve a target of reaching two million users. We are also looking to develop a payment mechanism which makes it easier for users to purchase items from within the app itself,” he adds.
Zoomcar
Greg Moran, Co-founder
When Greg Moran and David Beck were looking for a good business idea four years ago, India and Bangalore came to their mind — especially when the duo discovered that India did not have self-driven car rentals. Greg says, “We used car rentals in Pennsylvania and saw a huge opportunity in India, where public transport is not adequate and not everyone owns a car. We were keen on working in the area of providing technology solutions to make urban commute easier. We felt that the huge migrant population that makes up the workforce of major cities in India will lap up a self-driven car service and we started operations in Bangalore in 2013, with just seven cars and Zoomcar was born. We took help from locals in the car rentals business and have managed to expand to seven cities,” says the 30-year-old.
Zoomcar follows a membership-based system that allows customers to hire cars via the website or the mobile application, with an option to choose the number of hours. The fleet boasts of a range of cars from Ford Figo to Mercedes A Class sedans. We had tried our best to use only local technology in our cars. Once the permits and the licences fell into place, it was a smooth ride in cities such as Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad. We plan to expand to more cities in 2016. I think that the start-up ecosystem in India is very impressive and has resulted in a host of great companies making their mark,” contends Moran.
(With inputs from Ranjani Rajendra, Sooraj Rajmohan and Nikhil Varma )
