IIM-NIT alumni to serve people in India’s small towns
New Delhi-based Gobillion plans to expand across India and SE Asia, bringing the benefits of e-commerce to everybody in a market of US$100 billion.
With its outlier growth, the company is planning to raise their Series A investment round to maintain their growth and launch in new markets.
Gobillion co-founders and IIM-NIT alumni, Roshan Farhan and Kulapradip Bharali, said the company has witnessed outlier growth in its operating markets with 10.4x growth in GMV over the last 8 months, currently at a US$12 million annualized GMV run-rate, with industry leading customer retention metrics.
The co-founders are backed by YCombinator and top tier global VC funds.
“In India’s small towns, dynamics are very different – people live in close-knit communities, their shopping decisions are influenced by family and friends,” noted the co-founders in a release on 29 June 2022.
“Gobillion augments this real-life behaviour and brings the social experience to an app through their global first product, Gobillion Shopping Rooms.”
The co-founders, who are from small towns in India, realized that there is a big gap in the market when they saw their friends struggle with traditional e-commerce apps.
The product wasn’t built for them, and they missed the “social aspect in shopping,” said the duo.
“We have seen successful group buying models like Pinduoduo in China and Facily in Brazil,” noted Farhan and Bharali who have launched Gobillion with a mission of making e-commerce social and accessible for the next 500 million customers in tier 2+ towns in India.
They elaborated, “Since the pandemic, the e-commerce industry in India has grown massively riding on increased adoption by customers, with 80% smartphone users coming from small towns.
“However, the legacy e-commerce model is built to serve the needs of India’s premium customers from large cities.
“It excludes the intrinsic needs of customers from small towns in India, which account for roughly 90% of India’s population.” fiinews.com
