When Samar Singla and Chinmay Agarwal commenced Jugnoo in 2014, they were clueless about the effect they had been about to have on the each day lives of people. While initially, the duo released an autorickshaw aggregator platform as a lark, they quickly realised the mess they'd stepped into. While vehicles are used because the main mode to trip for lots in India, the section is still with critical troubles which includes recalcitrant drivers, exorbitant fares, and non-availability of autos.
Today, after being in business for over 20 months, with two extra co-founders Isha Singla and Nitish Singh and a crew of 300 personnel, Jugnoo is coping with forty,000 daily commuters, 3.5 Mn registered users and 12,000 car rickshaw drivers in greater than 40 towns in the united states of america. It has thus far raised $sixteen Mn investment and is sponsored via marquee investors together with Paytm, Snow Leopard Technology Ventures, Rocketship.Vc, Kunal Shah, Chris Kolenaty, Rakesh Mathur, and Vikas Taneja.
As Samar says,
“The initial journey turned into hard however profitable. In the start, it become hard to persuade drivers and gain traction. Since we had been targetting Tier II cities, the demography changed into very specific. Where drivers have been reluctant to apply a tech-enabled platform, it turned into very tough to make the commuters understand that this is also a way to try this. But eventually, whilst call for creeps in, things began moving easily and we were large enough for humans to hold coming lower back.”
20+ Months, 20+ Innovations, 20% M-o-M Growth
“Long time period fulfillment is built on a strong basis.” With this notion, from the beginning, Samar focused on making the fundamental base sturdy for Jugnoo. With one hundred drivers enrolled within the first month of launch, Jugnoo’s adventure up to now has been driven largely by innovation. It is currently developing with an M-o-M growth charge of 20% with Tier II cities main in phrases of registered customers, common each day user count and the quantity of energetic customers.
From the preliminary days, the focus has been on being a tech-pushed organisation and to introduce possible fee-introduced offerings for the consumers. This paved the manner for plenty of tie-usaand a few acquisitions.
In order to increase its marketplace outreach and upload to its consumer base, Jugnoo tied up with groups like Helpchat (a private assistant app), ixigo (a tour search engine), zophop (a public transportation records mobile app), OyeTaxi and Scoot app (meta-search structures to compare modes of delivery on fee basis). While MobiKwik and Paytm add-at the electricity of digital price, Punjab National Bank, and Piaggio furnished smooth financing options for brand new drivers.
It similarly extended its app-attain with the aid of introducing it on all foremost OS such as Android, iOS, and Windows and similarly elevated its offerings past Tier I and Tier II in small cities and rural regions. It also strengthened its group via roping in industry experts like Anand Prakash and signing TV celebrity Saumya Tandon because the brand face.
It also got here up with diverse product improvements and new services including Fatafat, Dodo Deliveries, Jugnoo Bot, Flight Map, a multilingual interface for drivers and more. “For Dodo Deliveries we've just made our first city, Chandigarh, coins drift-advantageous. We have made a respectable amount of cash and transactions in each Dodo Deliveries and Fatafat and now we will pass toward turning into worthwhile one by one,” says Samar.
When asked about the 3 most revolutionary tendencies at Jugnoo, he says, “First is the Jugnoo Bot as it permits you to use Jugnoo from any platform you are on even with out downloading the app. Next is Flight Map as it saves 30% of time and gas for drivers with right optimisation of routes and assets. Apart from these, our backend interface that permits drivers to get more income possibilities other than rides including deliveries and all other forms of jobs, I assume that is simply modern.”
Here is a glimpse of Jugnoo’s timeline showcasing primary events so far:
The Highs And Lows At Jugnoo
While things were easy for Jugnoo’s team in the initial 4 months of release, the bumpy journey commenced while it released Jugnoo Fatafat in March 2015 – to deliver custom orders for its users to their homes, from stores within the city.
It became close down in October after operating for about eight months and turned into relaunched in May this yr. Currently, running in Chandigarh, the carrier we could customers order sparkling end result and vegetables at their doorsteps, at less expensive mandi charges.
A similar tale goes for Jugnoo Meals – which introduced fresh, domestic-cooked inexpensive meals at user doorstep – which became shut in October 2015 due to lack of infrastructure. A revamped version of its ‘Meals’ offerings become launched in August lately. Although the model remains the identical, the organisation has claimed to revamp the menu and the again-cease procedures for the carrier.
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Nitish Singh, Co-founder, and CFO of Jugnoo who additionally heads the Fatafat and Meals vertical has this to mention concerning the continuous shifts:
“Any enterprise version that is good, can be assuming that everybody inside the world will be rational. But when 5 or 10 corporations begin actually burning money inside the bonfire, you have got a preference. We have raised $sixteen Mn thus far and have spent much less than 50% of it. We are a surely conservative organization in relation to coins. When we observed that people have started out spending aimlessly on it, we close it down. And wager what? In much less than a yr, all the ones companies are both shut down or have rolled back from the market. So we opened it again to fill the vacuum with a greater educated target market.”
When we requested about the mistakes Samar thinks that this problem could have been prevented at the earlier degree, he adds, “Hiring teams is vital to developing a business enterprise. Initially, we employed loads however now we understand that having a lean yet productive group is higher for boom. Also, within the very early days like first six months or so, we had been no longer that a great deal facts-pushed and that’s one aspect we must have executed. But now, at the cease of the day, I recognize which city is coins-heavy, which town won – the complete P&L is performed on the give up of the day itself.”
Bringing A Change For The Autorickshaw Driver Community
A standard monthly earnings for a driver related to Jugnoo is INR eight,000 which reaches up to INR 25,000, for honestly encouraged drivers. “We are not a organisation that advertises perks as this show weakness for your business model. Our trick is simple – increase their earning. I suppose that this has helped us and we were able to create a grassroots distinction and change to drivers profits,” says Chinmay.
Jugnoo additionally encourages equality amongst drivers and has added girls drivers on its portal. Meet the first girl driving force enrolled on the Jugnoo platform in Mysore.
Coming to challenges, apart from language, literacy and cultural diversities, loss of tech savvy amongst drivers is another foremost trouble which Jugnoo has to address . As Samar says,
“We must address drivers who're uneducated and aren't comfy the use of smartphones. We have our personal training programmes, but then how an awful lot can a single organization do? This has to be an industry initiative. We are honestly seeking to look up talent improvement in India, like a tie up with the authorities, to impart some basic gaining knowledge of to the drivers so that it becomes clean for them to conform the technology. A guru-chela (trainer-student) device is there that as an enterprise is not running for us, and someone genuinely needs to address that.”
The Best Way To Deal With Competition Is To ‘Ignore It’
According to Samar, their approach to address competition is to disregard it altogether. He believes that there's no need for a startup this early to in reality think about opposition. “Look at a hundred startups which have failed or no longer failed. None of them might have failed due to competition, however may be because of their execution strategies,” he says.
Every day there are 30 Mn autorickshaws rides taken within the u . S . A .. Jugnoo is presently doing just zero.1% of the overall experience extent. If we communicate approximately Ola, their overall rides for a day is about 400,000, in which the most important percentage is of cabs and no longer the automobiles.
“So you believe you studied this manner, the biggest aggregator of the country is also much less than 1% of just the auto volume. We think we are the most important ones in autorickshaw section,” says Samar. He further provides, “Also, with Flight Maps we're going full on against Google Maps, and the other hundreds of mapping technology. So we aren't overly thinking about opposition. Our recognition has been looking at wishes of the marketplace, addressing them separately and we've got were given the platform to do it.”
Jugnoo has been growing largely through word of mouth. Samar believes that stimulating online word-of-mouth concerning their activities enabled them to extend and capitalise on the buzz network and also interact in referral campaigns. “Promotions via numerous social media structures is another strategy we implement because of the massive attain that includes it. Also, the conversational nature of social media permits us to have an energetic dialogue with our customers and cultivate relationships based totally on their desires,” he adds.
Building Pockets Of Profits
According to Samar, “In the journey to date, we realised that no organization has a reverse adventure. Every corporation has confronted exceptional issues at unique instances. Like, whilst we released, we had been stricken with – will our proof of idea work? Will human beings fund it? Will we be capable of appeal to talent? I think we've solved those three troubles quite properly.”
He similarly introduced that the subsequent large problem was – what is the innovation to be completed to make it a sustainable grassroots commercial enterprise. “We have constructed a platform, we've built a enterprise, but we still need to parent out minor points across the enterprise, how do we innovate and make it profitable – that was the following assignment for us.”
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With Samar being a die tough fan of Amazon and Alibaba, he believes that despite the fact that these groups have not been profitable in a feel, they continually had centres at the middle – and the cores are usually worthwhile. As he further mentions,
“They were clearly able to build one element after the opposite, backing that middle piece. I think most organizations in India are comfy with now not having any profitability center, however that’s now not how we assume. Our next step is to get profitability and growth both, and have wallet of profits that are absolutely growing because the enterprise grows.”
The founders are further targetting to amplify into 100 towns by means of the cease of this year. Also, geographical enlargement across the specific verticals of Fatafat, Meals, and DoDo Deliveries is in the pipeline.
Editor’s Note
Autorickshaw aggregation is a marketplace worth exploring with 30 million rides being taken around the u . S . A . Every day. Jugnoo, while being within the position to end up a market leader, will must cope with the likes of Ola and other aggregators who have already got the infrastructure in area to tackle some other vertical: autorickshaws, of their quest to dominate the marketplace. Will it be capable of sustain its profitability core, stays the billion dollar query.
