Indore-based startup, GoPaani, has raised $600K seed funding from investors such as 3one4 Capital, PointOne Capital, and a host of angel investors including Mukund Jha (Dunzo co-founder) among others.
Founded by childhood friends Ankit Ranka and Arpit Sharda, GoPaani is a one-step solution for every daily water service provider to manage their business in a hassle-free way. GoPaani aims to be a complete app-based solution for daily delivery businesses in India. Starting with water jar suppliers, this app allows businesses to keep track of product inventory from dispatch, delivery, collection and unloading. Employees of these businesses get their app login to make delivery entries, and the business admin can track and generate real-time reports on employees’ work. Customers are also able to keep track of deliveries, make bill payments, give star ratings to deliveries, order additional products and message business owners – this brings transparency and improves customer experience.
The seed funding round saw participation from the leadership team of 3one4 Capital and PointOne Capital. Angel investors include Mukund Jha (Dunzo Co-founder), 6 Columbia University Alumni – Rohit Gupta (CEO, Dream Game Studios), Sharath Gururaj (India Head, Cermati.com), Devendra Laulkar (Co-founder, Avoma) and others, Satish Thakur (AVP, Swiggy) and two US-based investors Dan Clay Ellis (Founder, RallyTeam) and Kaushal Lahankar (Head of Machine Learning, S&P Global).
Ankit Ranka, Co-founder, GoPaani said, “We started GoPaani to solve the problems faced by over 1.2 million water delivery businesses in India like product loss, billing issues, poor customer service. We have seen adoption with other delivery businesses facing similar problems like milk and tiffin delivery. With GoPaani already present in 15 states across India and 8 different languages, we plan to focus on water delivery businesses and build the product for a wider set of delivery businesses starting next year.”
As more and more Indians increasingly use digital tools, many small businesses and vendors continue to operate offline. These businesses primarily operate within a radius of 5-8 km and calculate inventory and sales in traditional ways by maintaining ledgers on paper — which are both time-consuming and prone to causing loss.
GoPaani is trying to change that by equipping these small businesses with a suite of products to digitize their journals and manage their expenses and staff.
Arpit Sharda, Co-founder, GoPaani said, “Before GoPaani, I was into plastic sourcing, manufacturing and trading for over 8 years. I saw the pain points of delivery businesses such as water, milk suppliers very closely and every now and then got requests for technology help from these businesses. When I discussed this with Ankit, we decided to launch a digital representation of the daily sheets that these businesses carry – that was the starting point for us. From there on, we kept on building what our customers needed.”
As per studies, there are over 20 million daily delivery businesses in India – water, milk, vegetable, newspaper, gas cylinder, tiffin, laundry, catering, B2B delivery etc. From a Software subscription perspective it’s a USD 2.3 billion yearly market.
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Anurag Ramdasan, Partner, 3one4 Capital mentioned, “GoPaani is having a significant impact on Water Jar delivery or daily delivery business in general. Daily delivery businesses serve billions of customers every day but still rely on pen and paper for collections and inventory management which results in inefficiency and pilferages. We are excited to partner with Ankit and Arpit who have shown great understanding of the problem statement as evident from their product execution skills.”
As of now, GoPaani has started with its initial network of water suppliers contacts in central India and used existing online listings to reach a more comprehensive network all over the country. In addition, they have connected with water suppliers from every region by becoming a part of their WhatsApp groups, which has helped them reach many customers at once.
