Flipkart taps Dunzo founder to lead quick commerce push

Flipkart has hired Kabeer Biswas, co-founder of Indian delivery startup Dunzo, as the Walmart-owned e-commerce group expands its quick commerce business in the world’s most populous nation.

Biswas will lead Flipkart’s quick commerce business, called Flipkart Minutes, a source familiar with the situation told TechCrunch. The move follows Flipkart engaging with Biswas over a potential acquisition of embattled startup last year, TechCrunch first reported.

The talks fell due to complication in the ownership structure of Dunzo, which counts Reliance Retail as one of its largest backers. Reliance has all but written off Dunzo in the quarters since.

The quick-commerce model — delivering items to customers within 10 to 15 minutes — hasn’t worked in most parts of the world, but it’s increasingly finding success in India, where a range of retailers and internet firms, from food delivery giant Swiggy to online cosmetics platform Nykaa, are gearing up their supply chain ecosystems to accommodate for faster deliveries.

Zomato-owned BlinkIt, Swiggy-owned Instamart and Nexus-backed Zepto currently lead the quick commerce market in India, but that hasn’t deterred other big players from joining the race. Flipkart launched Minutes last year. Amazon began pilot of its quick commerce offering in the country last month.

Flipkart is aggressively expanding its quick commerce business, using this as an avenue to tap consumers in urban Indian cities, where Amazon has traditionally maintained stronger grip. The Bengaluru-based firm has already established more than 100 dark stores, warehouses dotting residential complexes, and is selling high-priced electronic items including laptops and smartphones, brokerage firm Jefferies wrote in a report this month.

Dunzo — founded in 2014 — was one of the earliest startups to explore the instant commerce model. Backed also by the likes of Google, Blume Ventures and Lightbox, it had ambitions to upend the country’s e-commerce sector with its half-an-hour deliveries to shoppers. But the startup, which raised more than $500 million, failed to make inroads as the competition intensified.

Biswas also explored other ventures in recent months with past team members, pitching various ideas to VCs, including Peak XV, according to people familiar with the talks.