Dunzo: Ahead of it's time

What if you could just... ask? Just open WhatsApp and type - "I left my charger at the office, can you get it?" and someone would do that for you?

In CX, we talk endlessly about reducing friction. Dunzo, in 2014, had eliminated it entirely.

I've spent years studying what makes customers come back, what makes an experience stick and what Dunzo had built, almost accidentally, was the answer.

They just didn't have a name for it yet!

It should have been called a conversational concierge.

You talked. It happened. No interface between the want and the outcome. Radical, almost reckless simplicity, and it worked.

The problem with it was that most people didn't get it. In 2015, chatting to get things done simply wasn't a behaviour that existed at scale in India.

Customers weren't used to it and so, under very real pressure to grow, Dunzo did what any rational business would do - it pivoted.

They built an app.

Added menus.

Launched categories.

Chased the hyperlocal commerce wave.

By 2021, they were promising 19-minute grocery deliveries, running 130 dark stores, competing head-on with Grofers (now Blinkit) and Instamart.

They went from "tell us anything, we'll do it" to "here's a menu, pick something."

From a personal errand runner to just another delivery app.

And the moment you become just another delivery app, you are no longer a novel solution. The market it helped create now belongs entirely to others.

Dunzo's share is Zero. A net loss of ₹1,800 crore in FY23. Platforms offline by early 2025. Reliance writing off ₹1,645 crore - gone.

Now look around you today.

You're chatting with AI to book cabs, order food, draft emails, manage your calendar and even decide what to wear. Dunzo's original idea - chat to get things done, is the defining UX of this moment. They were 10 years early and survival forced them to make choices that cost them the one thing that made them different.

What I'd tell any founder or CX leader: being ahead of the market is not a reason to abandon your idea. It is a reason to be more patient, and louder about why you're different.

Dunzo didn't die because they pivoted. They died because when they pivoted, they left behind the one thing customers couldn't get anywhere else. The moment they started looking like others, customers had no reason to choose them over their competitors.

If you're building a product or a brand - know what your “one thing” is. The thing that makes a customer say "I'll go there for this." Because the day you lose that, you're just another option. And just another option doesn't survive a crowded market!