Flipkart has hired Kabeer Biswas, the co-founder of Indian delivery startup Dunzo, as the Walmart-owned e-commerce group expands its e-commerce business in the world’s most populous nation.
Biswas will lead Flipkart’s e-commerce business, called Flipkart Minutes, a source familiar with the situation told TechCrunch. The move follows Flipkart’s engagement with Biswas over a potential acquisition of the embattled startup last year, TechCrunch first reported.
The talks collapsed due to complications in the ownership structure of Dunzo, which counts Reliance Retail as one of its biggest backers. Since then, Reliance has paid off Dunzo in quarters.
The express-commerce model—shipping items to customers within 10 to 15 minutes—has not worked in most parts of the world, but is finding increasing success in India, where a number of retailers and Internet firms, from food delivery giant Swiggy to online cosmetics platform Nykaa is gearing up their supply chain ecosystems to accommodate faster deliveries.
Zomato-owned BlinkIt, Swiggy-owned Instamart and Nexus-backed Zepto currently lead the quick commerce market in India, but that hasn’t stopped other big players from joining the race. Flipkart launched Minutes last year. Amazon began piloting its e-commerce offering in the country last month.
Flipkart is aggressively expanding its e-commerce business, using it as a way to capture consumers in India’s urban cities, where Amazon has traditionally held a stronger hold. The Bengaluru-based firm has already set up more than 100 dark shops, warehouses with residential complexes and is selling high-priced electronics 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. Also backed by Google, Blume Ventures and Lightbox, it had ambitions to improve the country’s e-commerce sector with its half-hour deliveries to shoppers. But the startup, which raised more than $500 million, failed to break through as 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.
