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Not solely have established gamers like Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, Zomato have thrown their hat within the small retail tech ring, newer children within the block have emerged like MyStore, Dukaan.io, DigitalDukaan, OKShop
The net grocery alternative within the nation was pegged at $500 Bn by a 2019 report of administration consulting firm Redseer. Of this half a trillion greenback alternative of transporting 13 Mn mother and pop outlets to the digital age, solely 0.2% had come on-line on the time
Bikayi is betting on this large alternative with a SaaS-based subscription mannequin for providers similar to cataloguing and order administration for small shopkeepers
The Indian startup ecosystem has all the time grown in spurts round the important thing wants of the market. There was the ecommerce wave when startups raced to be India’s Amazon. Then there was a meals supply wave; a funds wave; a lending tech wave. And now it’s time for dukaan tech.
Each couple of years within the final decade has seen a brand new sector attracting the eye of techies and VC cash has adopted the invention of the subsequent ‘good market’ — a time period utilized by the cash males for describing markets the place returns are positive to comply with no matter how efficient the product is.
With Reliance coming into the ecommerce fray and betting huge on bringing kirana shops to the net house, digitising grocery supply has grow to be the subsequent cease of entrepreneurs searching for an issue to resolve. The net grocery alternative within the nation was pegged at $500 Bn by a 2019 report of administration consulting firm Redseer. Of this half a trillion greenback alternative of transporting 13 Mn mother and pop outlets to the digital age, solely 0.2% had come on-line on the time.
Not solely have established gamers like Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, Zomato have thrown their hat within the ring, new children on the block have emerged like MyStore, Dukaan.io, DigitalDukaan, OKShop, Bikayi — in a section the place retail tech gamers similar to Peel Works, Nukkad Outlets, Snapbizz and others have jostled for house for some time. A cursory search of the phrase ‘dukaan’ on the Google Play Retailer throws up not less than 50 outcomes of apps that bear names with some variation of dukaan or kirana.
On the opposite finish of the digitisation spectrum, now we have just a few retail tech startups which have been round because the hyperlocal wave, concentrating on probably the most subtle set amongst retailers and retailer homeowners. These are providing more experienced providers similar to procurement, price-guards, two-side market assist, automated stock mapping and extra.
SaaS In The Arms Of India’s Kiranas
Striding these two worlds is Bikayi, a Hyderabad-based fintech startup based in January 2019 that featured amongst Y Combinator’s Summer time 2020 batch. Based by IIIT Hyderabad batchmates Sonakshi Nathani and Ashutosh Singla, the core thought of the platform was to attempt to create a set of subtle customers such that SaaS turns into second nature to them sooner or later.
In a manner, Bikayi is just not solely trying to bridge the adoption hole but additionally trying to promote value-added providers over and above what different new “dukaan-tech” apps are doing, however to the identical viewers.
“While many players are trying to build a Shopify for small merchants, we felt that those feature-heavy applications weren’t mobile friendly enough for them to adopt”, mentioned Nathani.
Bikayi’s minimal viable product launched in March final 12 months enabled neighbourhood outlets to make the net transition with a list that could possibly be shared on WhatsApp. Because the response to the app grew and the startup began receiving suggestions from shopkeepers, it began including extra options similar to built-in login for storefront workers, order monitoring via SMS, buyer opinions, dwell analytics of variety of orders and guests every day and month-to-month, and stock administration, amongst others.
Whereas the startup needed to make the UI/UX easy sufficient for this unsophisticated viewers, that doesn’t imply it was able to sacrifice on the function entrance. “Once a store starts ecommerce, its aspirations rise and we don’t want to be a tool that they skip at some point. Initially, everyone started as a cataloguing platform but now everybody is trying out different models. Today we are a SaaS-based subscription model that solves cataloguing and order management and that would be the major difference between us and others,” Nathani mentioned.
This perception within the aspirations of small companies has led Bikayi to undertake a subscription-based SaaS mannequin with a number of pricing factors catering to completely different varieties of companies. Whereas there’s a primary plan that prospects can use free of charge, there are additionally month-to-month plans starting from INR 167 to INR 667 which customers can select relying on their catalogue quantity and have necessities. Whereas these are early days by way of income, most apps concentrating on kiranas could not have a transparent thought of the income streams and going past what WhatsApp does for them.
The SaaS play is part of Bikayi’s technique to focus extra on attracting small companies which might be already utilizing WhatsApp or different small retail tech options, than attempting to cater to first-time customers. To drive adoption amongst SMEs and provides them a style of the bigger ecommerce pie, the startup has additionally began options similar to offering referral codes and social media integration of catalogues and presents.
Can Bikayi Be A Gamechanger In A Crowded House?
Its largest differentiator nonetheless is providing a supply integration with corporations like Delhivery and Shadowfax in geographies they’re current in. In locations with out logistics suppliers, companies can cost distance-based supply charges and use the native community.
With WhatsApp planning to go huge in retail tech and JioMart having already onboarded lakhs to small outlets, these integrations would assist Bikayi discover a footing in a market with cash-rich conglomerates. In keeping with Nathani, whereas WhatsApp Funds will ease the funds integration for small shopkeepers, the use circumstances are too huge to supply enterprise size-specific options and supply buyer assist.
Nevertheless, it’s not solely tech behemoths which might be closing in on this territory — opponents within the dukaan tech house are choosing up VC funding at a quick clip amid the pandemic. Compared to the $2 Mn seed spherical for Bikayi that Mantis Ventures, Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund and angel buyers participated in, Dukaan has raised a $6 Mn spherical, OkShop is backed by OkCredit that has $84 Mn in its funding kitty, MyStore is backed by Khatabook that has raised $111.5 Mn as but.
“Money won’t count in this case as this space is not distribution-first or marketing-led. This product has really good depth in terms of tech and whoever has the best tech will win the market,” Nathani mentioned.
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