This pilot episode of First Principles features Kabeer Biswas, founder and CEO at Dunzo, one of India’s fastest growing quick commerce companies. Kabeer talks about how he navigates failure, accepts feedback, and makes sure that Dunzo is always focused on the things that matter.

First Principles is a show where Rohin Dharmakumar, founder and CEO of The Ken, interviews some of the most successful business leaders, and entrepreneurs of our time on the lenses they use to look at the world around them. Lenses that help them see things that most of us don’t.

Full Episode Transcript: 

02:05 – What is Dunzo

Rohin Dharmakumar

All right, Kabeer, what’s a one-line description of what is Dunzo?

Kabeer Biswas

One-lines. Hmm. Dunzo is trying to build the largest convenience, what you call product for urban Indian customers. We focus on two big categories.

One is for customers to be able to buy their daily and weekly essentials. And the second one is for us to be able to enable logistics for every local merchant or enterprise out there in the country.

Rohin Dharmakumar

That’s a mouthful. If you told that to my mom, she wouldn’t understand. Could I ask you to rephrase how you would tell my mom what Dunzo is?

Kabeer Biswas

Aunty, do you want to be able to go ahead and buy stuff, grocery, and it can come to

you quickly in the next 20 minutes? And also, do you want to send something to Rohin that you made last evening?

Both of those are possible by just going ahead and opening up Dunzo.

Rohin Dharmakumar

Great. I mean, that’s a great answer. And I’m sure she’ll understand. Well, she’s a customer, so she already understands it.

Kabeer, what I’m going to do is, for the benefit of our listeners, I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions about Dunzo and you have the freedom to answer those questions or to decline to answer those questions.

So, I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions around how big Dunzo is today.

03:25 – How big is Dunzo today

Rohin Dharmakumar

How many monthly orders are you doing these days?

Kabeer Biswas

We do about 8 to 10 million monthly transactions.

Rohin Dharmakumar

Wow. How big is your organisation in terms of people?

Kabeer Biswas

On rolls, we have about 1,300-1,400 people.