Insights shared by Avkash Kumar, Founder & Director, Dakoo.
Understanding the market’s need, Dakoo, a hyperlocal marketplace & delivery platform founded by Mr. Avkash Kumar in 2021, is dedicated to bringing the latest technologies to the market. What started as a modest beginning for Avkash Kumar in 2021 during the ideation phases of his hyperlocal eCommerce platform, to what the nation is going to recognize soon as a tech franchise brand “Dakoo”, – his journey has traversed many complexities of a true entrepreneur. In 2021, 2x start-up founders Priyam and Avkash, two IIT Kharagpur alumni, sowed the seed of a hyperlocal marketplace & delivery platform Dakoo, with the mission of empowering local businesses.
Dakoo is looking to provide a superfast home delivery ecosystem just like Zepto. They have fast-growing start-up founders, just like their brand vision, with big dreams of getting into every Indian’s life and city, not only metro cities. Following the “Vocal for Local” motto of our honourable PM, Dakoo is also looking to decentralize the e-commerce industry by empowering the local vendors of India.
Dakoo Tech Franchise allows small businesses to own recession-free tech businesses in their city and be a part of an exciting and innovative movement. When each city has its own eCommerce platform, local vendors can easily sell their products online and this will ultimately strengthen the local economy. With the advent of the franchise model, Dakoo is committed to bringing this technology to every city and town in India to help small businesses and entrepreneurs to grow exponentially especially considering the post covid situation.
From Finding The Problem Till Getting Their First Seed Funding Of INR 2 Crores, Dakoo Super App Brings In Local CEOs Of Dakoo To Every City!
India is a country with many cities. There are tier-one cities like Kolkata, and Mumbai; tier-two cities like Surat and Jaipur, and tier-three cities like Mangalore. India is predominantly a rural country, but people from tier 2 and 3 cities migrate to bigger cities for education or job opportunities. This leads to the unavailability of many employment opportunities in these smaller towns, which is a big problem for those staying there. Dakoo will provide thousands of employment opportunities in these areas in the near future by empowering the local economy. In India, 60% of local retailers are not digitally enabled.
Out of the massive $1.1T Indian local retail market, more than 90% of FMCG sales take place through local retail. India has almost 86% of consumers who shop locally. Thus, statistically, most e-commerce players are projected to prefer Dakoo’s logistics service over other players because it can be scaled up with less cost. Dakoo’s business model is all about ensuring that small entrepreneurs get enough orders to sustain their businesses who are suffering from daily orders due to the easy accessibility of big Indian eCommerce giants.
Parnas Ghosh
How Dakoo Solves The Problem?
Startups and small businesses face a lot of challenges. And while there are programs to help, they don’t solve one of the entrepreneurs’ biggest challenges: Time. Dakoo looks to help small businesses across multiple industries with marketing and sales services through an easy-to-use digital platform. To ease out ventures like start-ups and small businesses, which face a lot of challenges, Dakoo Super App brings in an entire framework of apps for Customers, Merchants, and Delivery agents with regular updates. This helps to enhance product quality as well as customer experience. Dakoo offers free home delivery from any local shop, whether it’s a vegetable shop, Grocery store, Restaurant, Thela, Electronics shop, or Supermarket. All deliveries are completed within 25 minutes by Dakoo’s super-strong delivery ecosystem. Dakoo plans to reduce this delivery time to 15 minutes by the year of 2023. Bringing this kind of comforts and privileges of metro cities to tier 2 and 3 cities, while competing in tier 1 cities simultaneously, is the goal of the super app. Dakoo also plans to bring an electric vehicle hailing platform to tier 2 & tier 3 cities in the near future. The company has a dedicated team of professionals who work hard to ensure that its products can meet customer expectations. They also provide a Franchisee App, which helps handle the city monitoring and management dashboard. It also allows them to control multiple delivery agents through just one app.
The best part that would give a boom is the system of making sure to keep track of all orders placed by various customers using different delivery partners. It enables them to maintain high transparency throughout their entire business process. Apart from ensuring that they deliver the best services to their clients, they have made sure that they can make payments easily and quickly without any issues or delays. This helps them achieve maximum productivity without compromising service quality or efficiency levels. Dakoo also offers digital marketing services such as Digital Marketing, guerrilla marketing & branding material, Marketing pitch, onboarding & training Videos for merchant & delivery agents, the Initial level of Customer support, Merchant support & Delivery Agent support. This helps businesses gain visibility online, thereby increasing sales volume significantly.
Want to Operate with Dakoo? Know How!
Dakoo was designed to help entrepreneurs reduce costs and complexity. If you wish to use Dakoo you have to follow these steps.
- You can Hire delivery agents who will be paid per delivery directly via the app.
- Convince Merchants in your city to join Dakoo, using our marketing pitch video.
- Conduct offline marketing & branding campaigns with materials provided by Dakoo.
- Manage delivery escalation & feedback improvements.
You will be responsible for any and all taxes and fees related to your business, as well as complying with local laws and regulations. This includes VAT, corporate tax, income tax, and more. You will also be responsible for any legal liabilities or other financial commitments that may arise from running your business. Make sure you comply with all applicable hiring laws and regulations, as well as labour standards. Protect your data by complying with all applicable data protection laws. And finally, make sure you are compliant with all intellectual property laws. The company recently took 10,000 interviews and going to award franchises to top 100 entrepreneurs.
Growth Plans and Future Roadmap
Dakoo’s service is growing in popularity among local entrepreneurs and small businesses. The company is focusing on building a system that can grow alongside them. In the next few years, they hope to leverage artificial intelligence to create a single platform where eCommerce and digital marketing are closely tied together. Dakoo recently secured INR 2 Cr from the Founders of FlyDining, helping them complete their vision of digitizing the local market. The investors, Mr. Pankaj Dhingra, Mr. Samir Dhingra and Mr. Shubham Singhal, have shown faith in the business model of Dakoo and invested for the better future of India.
Being open to co-branding opportunities with EVs and looking to launch in tier 2 and 3 cities, Dakoo is all set to become an important part of how thousands of local business owners run their online operations. As soon as small businesses grow beyond local exposure and word-of-mouth promotion, it’s time to map out a growth strategy. Ideally, that means creating a set timeline based on specific milestones. Without these milestones ahead of time, it can be difficult to make smart decisions about how best to spend marketing dollars down the road when cash flow becomes an issue. If money is tight right now, consider scaling back advertising costs temporarily until revenue hits another level again. Here’s where all Dakoo will serve as a real Dakoo, for as a good one, for thousands of entrepreneurs and their businesses!
