Mukesh Ambani is the richest person in India with a net worth of more than Rs 7,77,109 crore and to achieve this, the billionaire invested in a range of startups over the years. Few of the most successful Indian startups have Mukesh Ambani as a key investor and one of the unique companies in which Reliance Industries chairman invested heavily in Dunzo, an instant delivery app which is currently in big crisis. Founded by Kabeer Biswas in 2014, Dunzo was initially just a WhatsApp group but with significant improvement and growth, it got Mukesh Ambani’s attention and he was tempted to invest more than Rs 1600 crore. Let’s know more about the entrepreneur Kabeer Biswas who got Mukesh Ambani’s attention.
Kabeer Biswas is a computer science engineer who explored his interest by working in a plastic factory in Silvassa before he decided to pursue MBA. After getting some business skills and polishing them at sales and customer service at Airtel, Biswas went on to found his open company Hoppr. His first startup was acquired by Hike, giving him a push to pursue his entrepreneurial journey.
To complete the transition of Hoppr, he came to Bengaluru and that’s where he teamed up with Ankur Agarwal, Dalvir Suri, and Mukund Jha to start Dunzo. The platform used to deliver groceries, essential supplies and other commodities even before Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart.
Although Dunzo is quite popular in metro cities now, it started out as a WhatsApp group where customers used to post their orders. With continuous growth and investment, a proper Dunzo app was formed and the company expanded to more cities. Soon, the startup got interest from Mukesh Ambani and his company Reliance Retail ended up investing USD 200 million. The investment took the valuation of Dunzo to over USD 775 million (over Rs 6400 crore), according to The Times of India.
Unfortunately, the startup hasn’t been doing good for the past year and recently it posted a loss of Rs 1,800 crore in FY23, a 288% increase from the previous year. Dunzo is currently cash strapped and it has been hit by the departure of several top-level executives, including co-founders and its finance head, as well as delays in salaries of several employees and mass layoffs across phases.
