Dukaan is a marketplace for local stores to make themselves their online stores. Consumers can also buy from their local stores online through the store finder app/website of Dukaan.

They have essentially allowed any business to make themselves an online store in a few clicks, giving them a chance to keep up with the digital trends and compete with prominent players such as Amazon, Flipkart, and more.

Their users are in 2 areas. First is retail stores across India, there are over 14 million retail stores in India, and Dukaan aims to help them become as online as Amazon or Flipkart.

Their 2nd user base is the consumers, the people who buy the products from the retailers. As online shopping is becoming super prevalent, people generally prefer the easiness and efficiency online shopping provides. Yet, it’s also clear that people prefer buying from stores they trust, so through Dukaan, they can buy items online from their favorite stores.

There are around 330 million online buyers in India. The E-commerce market is expected to reach 20 billion dollars by 2026, so it’s clear that Dukaan is sitting in a gold mine of untapped potential.

Dukaan mainly has 2 products:

1. A platform for the stores

2. A platform for consumers

What do local store owners struggle with?

• Tech Savviness

• Website Designing

• Delivery

Dukaan solves this problem by having a simple verification process of an email and phone number.

Websites and apps don’t have to be designed; Dukaan keeps it as simple as possible and gives the owners the flexibility of designing banners of their own.

Through Dukaan’s delivery system, store owners do not have to worry about deliveries themselves; Dukaan takes care of it.

In addition to all this, through Dukaan, store owners can keep track of their sales, accept digital payments, update their inventory, use online ads, and more.

Dukaan simplifies the creation of online store platforms for small and medium businesses. Local Stores finally have an outlet to keep up with the latest technological trends.

Consumers have an all-inclusive platform through Dukaan. Whether you want groceries, food, clothes, electronics, medicine, you find the store closest to your place through Dukaan.

These aren’t stores located in random warehouses somewhere far away; the stores you find in Dukaan are similar to the stores next door.

Dukaan allows consumers to buy products from their local stores, promoting local businesses while also adding convenience to consumers.

Dukaan has 3 sources of revenue:

1. Transactions

   • Dukaan charges a 2% transaction fee from the merchant for every transaction between the merchants and buyers.

2. Subscriptions

   • Through the premium subscriptions, Dukaan allows stores to get their custom domains, rating and reviews system, location-based delivery charges, plugins, themes, and, most importantly, desktop access.

   • In addition, Dukaan also gives unlimited product listing and access to external payment gateways for premium subscribers.

   • They charge 2500 Rupees quarterly and 7000 Rupees annually for these subscriptions.

3. Advertisement

   • Store owners can launch their marketing campaigns through Dukaan for a fee.

Dukaan was founded by 2 people, Suumit Shah and Subash Choudhary. They have founded multiple startups together in the past, with Dukaan being their 3rd venture together.

Suumit is a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in digital marketing. Starting as a digital marketing manager in Housing.com and TinyOwl, he eventually used his skills for his startups. Suumit’s initial ventures Risemetric and Rankz.io focused on SEO and digital marketing; they were agencies that helped their clients get the best reach digitally.

Subash is the engineer behind the Dukaan platform. Starting as a technical lead in Zenith Infotech, he made a move to entrepreneurship with Suumit Shah. He is Cisco and Microsoft certified in networks and system engineering.

Both of them got together intending to simplify the lives of the ordinary people of India.

There are 3 major players in the online marketplace platform for local businesses.

1. Khatabook

2. Bikayi

3. Whatsapp

Khatabook and Dukaan were caught up in legal controversies as Khatabook was alleged to have plagiarised the logo and interface of Dukaan, which had both of them banned for more than a month. Khatabook had recently raised $100 million in its Series C funding and could be said as the most direct competitor of Dukaan.

Bikayi is more of a Shopify competitor. The store owners have plenty of flexibility in terms of designing and personalization. Their ultimate subscription costs about 17000 rupees, which isn’t as affordable as Dukaan’s 7000 rupees premium subscription. Bikayi has cheaper alternatives, but in essence, their focus is on E-commerce more than the local Kirana stores.

Whatsapp will become the most significant competitor of all the above businesses. With features like catalog and Whatsapp pay coming into place. With the already extensive adoption of Whatsapp across India, it’s easy to understand how Whatsapp can change Dukaan’s market landscape.

The most considerable risk in Dukaan comes from Whatsapp, as already mentioned. To be able to keep a value proposition attractive enough to choose Dukaan over Whatsapp will be tough. Especially considering how easy it is to use Whatsapp and its already wide adoption.

However, Dukaan has access to an integrated delivery system and store management that is not possible through Whatsapp. So, for now, it’s a good bet to invest in Dukaan, especially considering for companies as large as Facebook/Meta (Whatsapp owners) to enter the delivery market would take years.

Dukaan simplifies lives for both the local businesses and consumers. It’s incredible how they have developed a system that allows these local stores to stand on the same plane as Amazon, Flipkart, and other large corporates.

Why have they already been so successful?

They focused on the customers. They knew the pain points of their consumers to the detail, allowing an intuitive platform for all users.

I think Dukaan has a great future ahead and would bet on their success because Dukaan’s success is local businesses’ success.