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On-demand services are catching momentum across various cities in India. It is a well-known fact that the with the penetration of mobile internet daily requirement services are not only limited to metropolitan cities now, tier II & III cities are now becoming a larger playground for all the leading service providers across India. While the unorganized sector i.e. your local dhobi, still rules the roost, organized players are slowly making inroads into the industry.

It is estimated that by the end of 2020, more than three million Indian households would be requiring laundry services on a weekly or even daily basis. However, Laundry market in India has always lacked structure and has been lacking in terms of quality and commitment for an average.
To cater to this rapidly rising demand, DhobiLite is launching its Laundry and Dry cleaning operations in Lucknow.

DhobiLite is a Noida based cleaning service startup that has its footprints all across Delhi & NCR. DhobiLite having around 7 years of expertise in Laundry business is the pioneer of Online Laundry in India. Besides Laundry, DhobiLite provides Premium Laundry, Premium Dry Cleaning, Dry Cleaning, Organic Laundry services for garments.

Dhobilite wants to make laundry a hassle-free chore for consumers along with bringing a structured approach to the present market, a market with a 2x growth trend. Dhobilite with its Android based application and website provides end-to-end solution for all your laundry needs from placing order, tracking order, rate list, payment solutions & integration with PayTm, history, complaints, rating, referral and coupons. Dhobilite not only provides end-to-end solutions to its customers but also to vendors it is associated with. Everything is at one place.

Nishant Tripathi, Co- founder- Dhobilite, said

We are focused on making our services affordable to every middle household in India. Owning the entire supply chain is critical for this. This helps us provide the best possible customer experience. It’s not rocket science, people wear clothes and they get dirty. With busy schedules it is getting frustrating for people to do these jobs at home, hence this is a daily need and not a need of some specific segment.

May be at this stage only a % of population can afford but like food, laundry is a day to day thing. So, if there is a need there has to be a service catering to that need. A very important aspect of any service based business is to deliver quality service every time and for this DhobiLite has used technology in day to day operations right from customer placing order to processing the order and then to delivery and feedback. With the help of this fully integrated in house developed solution, DhobiLite ensures that the franchise partner doesn’t have to worry about maintaining accounts or tracking orders or communication channel with the customer.

Abhishek Kumar, Co- founder- Dhobilite said

We entered the market at the right time in 2011 that allowed us to have valuable experience regarding market and technology. Now the market is set to explode and Dhobilite is best placed to completely exploit the fruits of expansion. Market need is simple, they want laundry. Technology, branding and other things is not what they are looking for.

For us technology is the enabler to meet customer expectations, other competitors are facing issue in expansion because of this reason. We are providing our services to vendors as well which is helping them increasing operational efficiencies by at least 20~25% thereby resulting into reduced costs and better profitability for vendors and creating a win-win environment for all.

After expanding its services in every nook and corner of Delhi NCR region, DhobiLite is now opening in Lucknow and inviting people for franchise opportunities.

DhobiLite has a different model of franchising where entry ticket to open franchise is small and subsequent payouts are based on Pay-as-you-grow model. DhobiLite views its franchisees as partners in growth and if franchise succeeds than company succeeds automatically. Experience of more than 6 years in industry has helped them to develop a unique understanding of laundry process and have been able to bring gross profit margin at 38% which gives enough room of profitability for franchisee and franchisor. Small entry ticket and a low royalty fee of 8% gives the franchise owner a flexibility to utilize the funds for marketing which helps in scaling the business faster.

Depending upon the interest of business owner, DhobiLite offers a range from pure offline model franchise [in Delhi NCR region and Lucknow] to a fully owned master franchise. Each franchise model is uniquely designed after study of the demographics of the area, the geographical spread of the area and then arrive at the fee structure.

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GO-JEK Engineering, one of Southeast Asia’s leading start-ups from Indonesia, have announced the successful completion of its ‘She-Hack‘, a women-only, 24 hour hackathon. ‘She-Hack’ saw participation from over 100 young women, who had travelled from Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, as well as from within Bengaluru. These women technologists created solutions around broad themes that included Mobility, Data Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, amongst others.

128 ideas were submitted for consideration to a panel of judges that comprised senior engineers and executives from GO-JEK India, Singapore and Indonesia. 115 cutting edge ideas were shortlisted by the team of women hackers, ranging from mobile analytics, facial recognition, optimizing data transfer to sentiment analysis and chat bots.

From left to right, second prize winners Divya Choudhary and Abinaya Mahendrian from team Superwoman, Jayshree Anand from team Alchemy, Sapna Jayavel and Janani Balasubramanian from team Nebula

The first prize winner was Jayshree Anand from the Alchemy team, who created ‘App Monitor‘ a sentiment analysis tool, which uses data from social media to pinpoint issues that customers are facing and reports back to the GO-JEK team. She won a Hyundai i10 car.

The second prize winner was the Superwoman team, comprised of Divya Choudhary and Abinaya Mahendrian. Using Data Science and Analytics, the team’s solution ‘Insight Pro‘, helped analyse which locations and customers brought in the most revenue in order to optimize allocation of resources. They won a Vespa Scooter.

The third prize winner, the Nebula team comprising Sapna Jayavel & Janani Balasubramanian designed a solution with Artificial Intelligence connected to a chat bot. Their solution ‘Where’s the Food?‘ that helps people with food ordering in different countries. It uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to analyse the food menu uploaded by the user by taking a photograph with their camera, and then makes recommendations based on the user’s dietary restrictions, allergies etc. They won an iPhone 7.

About GO-JEK Engineering India

GO-JEK Engineering India is the Bengaluru-based product development and training centre of GO-JEK, Indonesia’s largest and most valued start-up. Backed by Sequoia Capital India, KKR and DST Global, GO-JEK is one of the most watched start-ups in Southeast Asia. The GO-JEK Engineering India team comprises of developers, data scientists, designers and product managers who work on product innovation, mining data and crafting consumer experiences. For further information, please visit GO-JEK

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Entire 2015 had revolved around startups in the Hyper-Local segment that aimed at bringing more convenience to the customers by delivering daily chores at the doorstep. This was all done at the click of a Button i.e. through an app. Be it Peppertap (that recently shut down it’s Grocery Business), Grofers etc., each one of them wanted a share of the pie.

With the Hyper-local segment getting over-crowded with many players & customer-acquisition costs rising, it gave rise to the next wave of commerce namely ‘Conversational Commerce‘. Here the consumer has the privilege to locate nearby businesses, chat with the business-owners and place order on the App. Once the order has been confirmed, logistics team delivers the order at your doorstep (free of cost). This is termed as O2O (Online to Offline) commerce. The startups that pre-dominantly operate in this market segment are GoodBox, Look Up, MagicX etc. Some of them use AI to reduce manual intervention when answering questions from customer over the chat (thus resulting in reduction of overall operational costs).

The core of all these ‘Conversational Commerce’ startups is to leverage medium of chat so that customers can order anything (food, grocery etc.) on the app. For curiosity purpose, we happened to give a shot to GoodBox and the experience was overall satisfactory (right from Items Search-> Adding them to cart-> Placing the order and doing the payment). In this article, we review GoodBox App from features, reliability, UX, payment etc. point of view; so let’s get started.

[Image Credit* – GoodBox]

GoodBox : What’s in the Box

GoodBox is a conversational m-commerce startup that has is co-founded by Abey Zachariah [ex-RedBus core team], Anand Kelaginamani [IIM-B], Charan Raj [ex-Accenture], Mahesh Herle [ex-National Instruments], Mayank Bidawatka [ex-RedBus core team & co-founder The Media Ant], Mohit Maheshwari [IIM-B] and Nithin Chandra [NIT-K & IIM-B].

It aims to bring neighbourhood Kirana stores, saloons, spas, restaurants etc. online and helps them create a store-front [using the GoodBox Seller App] within minutes. Just like traditional e-commerce companies, there is a customer facing app and the other is Seller app [that seller can use to manage his inventory]. It provides the seller Seamless Discovery, Ordering and Payment. It was recently in news when they acquired SmartPocket for an un-disclosed amount. It had earlier raised $2.5 Million in Series-A funding from Nexus Venture Partners.

GoodBox : Key Features

As mentioned earlier, GoodBox wants customers to connect, chat and buy (the final transaction) from your local businesses without any compromise on the privacy. On launch of the app, it shows the registration page where user needs to enter his/her mobile number and email. An OTP is then received to complete the verification. We found the registration process very simple and less time-consuming (since un-necessary fields were not required to be filled at the registration time).

The App only requires access to GPS and the number is kept private (since the entire transaction occurs over chat)!! Some of the key features of GoodBox are:

Discover : Find businesses around you which might otherwise might take time to locate.

WhatsApp like easy chat interface : Since virtually every mobile user in India is present on WhatsApp, hence it was primarily important that their chat interface did not have many deviations in it’s UX. The customer facing GoodBox app is very well designed and is easy to use (since we are all familiar with WhatsApp)!!

No Middleman :  There is one to one chat between the customer and seller that results in lesser delay (in responding to chats).

Business Profile : You can check the Business Profile, Business Timings, Last online status of the seller, location etc. What we liked about this feature is that there was a specific mention about the seller’s average response time (on chat) and that coupled with Last Online might result in customer-stickiness i.e. if Seller response time is fast, than there are high chances that customer might not look for similar seller in his/her vicinity.

Payment : Payment can be done either via Card or Cash. Surely, the team at GoodBox would be working with the SmartPocket team for their in-house wallet integration that would result in better margins on every per-transaction.

Online Catalogue & Prompt Delivery : 100+ categories (Groceries, Restaurants, Chemists, Laundry etc) are present on the app. It has tied-up with major super-markets and local grocery stores in Bangalore (for the areas where GoodBox is currently operational). There are 10000+ grocery products and browsing (and comparing them with similar products) is very easy.

BESCOM Bill Payment : You can pay your BESCOM bill on GoodBox without any hassles. You need to just enter your Account ID to make the payment.

GoodBox : Detailed review

Once the user logs-in to GoodBox, it takes you to the home screen. You can now search for Businesses who are present on GoodBox (and available in your vicinity) via the ‘Explore’ button. What we really liked is that the Seller rating is also displayed along with the search, this results in making informed decisions since user does not have to go to ‘Seller Profile’ to check the rating!!

Once you have short-listed the seller, you can start chatting with them. In case if the seller does not respond in stipulated time (which is the average response time), the Reminder feature is turned ON. Once the user selects Remind, GoodBox would ping the seller once they are online. It is a very good approach so that the seller does not loose a prospective customer (which might result in customer retention).

The Seller Business Timings are also mentioned in the address bar that is necessary so that it is clear to customer whether any response from seller is expected (at that very moment).

For the review, we ordered cake from nearby Cake Shop (that is listed on GoodBox) and the entire process was seamless. Payment was done using Mobikwik and delivery was prompt (within 30 minutes) & was fulfilled by the Cake Shop itself. Similar to Hyper-local businesses, GoodBox relies on Seller’s logistics capabilities (if they have it) or might have tied-up with logistics providers that provide last-mile delivery (which is useful for sellers who do not want to own logistics).

GoodBox : Scope for improvement

Last online : When we searched for sellers, we noticed that there are many sellers who were ‘last online on GoodBox’ 2~3 months back. For the purpose of the review, we pinged them but there was no response from them (even after 30 minutes). On the other hand, some sellers did not respond even after having read the message!!

This might result in bad-customer experience and hence, it becomes primary for the GoodBox team to educate sellers about timely communication.

Pin Code suggestion : GoodBox is currently present in selected areas of Bengaluru. Hence, in order to target their next ‘area of expansion’; it would have been better if a text-box was provided where customer could enter his/her pin-code. Once GoodBox is present in that locality, customer can than be notified about it thereby resulting in better customer stickiness.

Bar Code support : Similar to Amazon Dash, where user scans bar-code of the product and is prompted to add the product to the cart;  GoodBox can add support for bar-code scanner (in it’s app) so that user can scan the bar-code and continue with the next step for completing the purchase.

Once product is searched, it can then list down the ‘Sellers in customer’s vicinity’ making the entire cycle of ‘Product Discovery and Purchase’ more friction-less !!

GoodBox : Closing Thoughts

We liked the overall look and feel of the GoodBox app. The customer-facing app is very well-designed (we could not look into the seller-side app). The entire concept of interacting directly with business owners is very unique and saves lot of time in communication (which might not have been the case if an agent was involved).

As mentioned in their mantra, GoodBox is definitely taking “Buying from local businesses” a notch higher!! GoodBox for Android is available here, GoodBox for iOS is available here. If you have used the GoodBox App, please leave your experience in the comments section.

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Helpchat, the chat-based personal assistant app that helps users get more things done, records a phenomenal 1 million downloads in just eight months since launch. The app is rated 4.5 on the Google Play Store. The unprecedented response to the app is testimony to the company’s unrelenting effort in simplifying daily tasks and becoming the default behaviour of users for a variety of daily needs.

It has registered maximum traction in Bengaluru, followed by Delhi-NCR and then Mumbai. The services that are most popular with users include mobile recharges, laundry, food ordering, household services, shopping deals and coupons etc.

Helpchat is a personal assistant app that completes task on users behalf, has passed on $6 million worth of user requests to its partner businesses in last 3 months. Helpchat customer promise is to provide user the best available option for a particular task and get it done on user’s behalf.

Speaking on the success of Helpchat, Ankur Singla, Founder and CEO, Helpchat, said

Since inception, we, at Helpchat have had a single-minded devotion to amplifying the users’ ability to get things done. The overwhelming response is a manifestation of our committed efforts. We use these figures as impetus to push us further and propel us to achieve greater things as we go ahead.

Helpchat has recently launched an automated conversational feature to help users schedule their laundry, order food, get suggestions on the best shopping deals etc. Forward-thinking initiatives such as this have enabled Helpchat to carve a special niche for itself in the consumer mind-scape.

As Helpchat has already registered a million downloads, its current focus is going to be on delivering a superb experience to its existing users. Through word-of-mouth publicity it aims to soon reach its target of one lakh daily active users.

About Helpchat

Helpchat is the personal assistant app that helps you get more things done. Be it anything, from recharging your phone to tech support, from travel booking to holiday guidance, from ordering food to shopping assistance to finding deals & coupons, from finding gifts to suggesting the best electronic item, from doing a web check-in to getting your laundry done – Helpchat can get all of them done for you.

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Helpchat, a chat-based personal assistant app that helps you get more things done, has agreed to acquire Mumbai-based start-up Niffler for an undisclosed amount. Niffler was incepted as a discovery platform for users to access deals & discounts from local brick and mortar stores. It recently introduced chat-based interactions between consumers and local businesses. This makes Niffler a perfect DNA match for Helpchat and the acquisition is a step further in the consolidation of Helpchat’s dominant position in the chat-based personal assistant eco-system in India.

HelpChat_Niffler

Both Niffler and Helpchat share the common vision of facilitating the everyday life and tasks of consumers with the right information over the highly convenient and quick medium of chat.  Acquisition will also enable Helpchat to launch its services in Pune and Mumbai faster as Niffler already has a presence in these key markets. Post the acquisition, the entire team at Niffler will join Helpchat.

Ankur Singla, CEO and Founder, Helpchat said

We are geared for aggressive pan-India growth in the coming few months. The acquisition of Niffler is one of the first major steps in this direction. Niffler team has expertise on community-driven experiences and retailer supported commerce.  They share our vision of enabling consumers to get more done through chat-based personal assistance. Acquisition will also help Helpchat accelerate the growth of its personal assistant engine across the areas of offline commerce and local deals based on user’s intent.

We are thrilled to have the Niffler team on board and look forward to their contributions in further bolstering Helpchat’s position as a smart personal assistant app for the Indian consumer

Edul Patel, Co-Founder Niffler said

In Helpchat we found the perfect partners to further our mission of plugging the information gap that exists in India. We share Helpchat’s vision of assisting consumers in getting more done by doing less, using its chat-based personal assistant app. We look forward to combining our brand synergies and expertise with theirs and setting new benchmarks in the way consumer-get their daily task done in India.

Co-founded by Edul Patel, Prince Arora and Viraj Shah, Niffler was launched in July 2014 with the objective of providing a location-based contextual offers and deals discovery platform for the Indian consumers. It had raised funding worth $1 million in March 2015 from SAIF partners.

About Helpchat

Helpchat is the personal assistant app that helps you get more things done. Be it anything, from recharging your phone to tech support, from travel booking to holiday guidance, from ordering food to shopping assistance to finding deals & coupons, from finding gifts to suggesting the best electronic item, from doing a web check-in to getting your laundry done – Helpchat can get all of them done for you.

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Helpchat, a personal assistant messenger app, today announced that it was opening up its platform for API integrations [technical integrations] to businesses. With this integration, businesses would be able to integrate directly into the Helpchat app and acquire and serve new users for their businesses.

Over the next few weeks, Helpchat will include transactional functionality from companies including Ola, OLX, Freshmenu, CommonFloor, RoadRunnr, Limetray, Mast Kalandar, RedBus, MyWash to integrate APIs into its personal assistant app. There are currently 25+ businesses in the integration waiting list.

Helpchat_small

Ankur Singla, Helpchat, Founder and CEO

Our vision is to help users win their daily battle with tasks and make their lives easier. In order to build a one-stop horizontal platform, we will rely on curated partners to expose to our users.

Like a personal assistant, our job is to find for you the best solution for your task – be it ordering food or finding a local services provider. We help you choose from the different options out there and ensure that you get a good experience

Post integration, users would be able to call a cab, order laundry, or food directly within the Helpchat app and the fulfilment of the order would be done by the partners.

Sudarshan Gangrade, VP – Marketing, Ola said

This API integration with Helpchat will further strengthen our mission of building mobility for a billion Indians. Ola is committed to making available a range of personal transportation options within minutes, now also on the Helpchat app! We are excited about the possibilities of this partnership in the time to come.

Mohit Kumar, Co-founder & CEO, Roadrunnr said

At Roadrunnr we aim to provide merchants in India the capability to deliver orders rapidly and on-demand to customers in their locality by connecting them with a supply force using mobile technology. Our association with Helpchat will help the consumer in getting a personalized experience in hyper-local services.

Vishrut Chalsani, VP – Enterprise Solutions, Helpchat added

Our chat sessions are growing at a healthy rate, with a high transaction intent from users. The next logical step was to leverage our deep enterprise relationships to help businesses to build on top of this audience. I can foresee us partnering with more than 1000 businesses over the next 6 months.

About Helpchat

Helpchat [earlier called Akosha] launched it’s personal assistant chat app in January 2015 and raised Rs. 100 crores from Sequoia Capital in June 2015. It recently opened a Bangalore office to add more engineers and product people to its team. Be it anything, from recharging your phone to tech support, from travel booking to holiday guidance, from grocery to food ordering, from shopping assistance to finding deals & coupons, from finding gifts to suggesting the best electronic item, from doing a web check-in to getting your laundry done – Helpchat can get all of them done for you.