Task management app dunzo gets $650K from Blume, Aspada, others

Bangalore-based daily tasks management app dunzo has raised $650,000 (around Rs 4.4 crore) in pre-Series A round of funding led by Aspada Investment Advisors and Blume Ventures.

Prominent angel investors including Google India MD Rajan Anandan and JustDial CTO Sandipan Chattopadhyay also participated in the funding round.

Founded in 2015 by Ankur Aggarwal, Dalvir Suri, Mukund Jha and Kabeer Biswas, dunzo -- run by Dunzo Digital Pvt Ltd -- is aimed at solving the deep local discovery and fulfillment problem. The chat-based task management app allows users to create to-do lists through the app; collaborate on tasks; and have them get done by dunzo. The platform leverages both AI (artificial intelligence) and human operators in providing solutions.

It is available as dunzo on Google Play store and dunzoit on the Apple App Store.

dunzo currently focuses on categories - shipping packages, repairing stuff, buying, and home services.

Explaining the dunzo value proposition, Karthik Reddy of Blume Ventures says: "Is it a mobile concierge? Is it chat-based commerce? Is it a local merchant discovery and fulfillment mechanism? Is it my handyman on the cloud? Yes, dunzo is all of this in our opinion." According to Reddy, when a customer needs any task, they don't need to know how it gets done, they just want it completed and almost perfectly. "Through its integrated operator, merchants and logistic platform, dunzo fulfils and delights with simplicity of a chat and images on its app."

The startup claims dunzo has scaled rapidly since its launch last year to a monthly run rate of 10,000 'moments of consumer delight'.

"We expect this model will deliver both a distinctive customer experience and significant income improvements to small service providers by creating linkages to larger and more formal markets," said Sahil Kini, principal, Aspada.

A bunch of Indian on-demand concierge service startups have attracted investors in the last one year. In January this year, chat-based concierge services startup Wishup secured seed funding from 500 Startups, former Rocket Internet managing director Mato Peric and TracxnLabs.

Last year, Joe Hukum raised an undisclosed sum in seed funding from TracxnLabs, Citrus Payments' Jitendra Gupta and 1mg.com's Prashant Tandon. Lookup raised $2.5 million in Series A funding led by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla's personal fund, Khosla Impact, with participation from Biz Stone (Twitter co-founder). Mumbai-based 'GetMyPeon raised seed funding of Rs 1.5 crore (under $235,000) to augment its operations. Goodbox secured $2.5 million (Rs 16.5 crore) in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners. Goodservice received $1.6 million (Rs 10 crore) in seed funding from Sequoia Capital in June.

Haptik, Yellow Messenger and OK Sir are other players in this segment.