Product Case: Finding the Problems and Opportunities for Dunzo

Published in

Agile Insider

6 min readApr 28, 2022

Disclaimer: Some of the problems mentioned here need to be validated based on the data available internally at Dunzo — as an outsider I have added a few problems without proper validation.

Source: https://entrackr.com/2019/12/exclusive-dunzo-suspends-ops-bengaluru-mumbai-ncr/

Growth Flywheel for Dunzo

Problems with the Existing Product

Problems faced by the Dunzo Delivery Partners

Delivery Partners are not able to get support for their queries/concerns — Currently, the delivery partners can only raise the tickets and get a reply to them from the support team
Delivery Partners are reporting issues with the application about the battery drainage and many issues in major flows with battery-saver mode

Source: Dunzo App Reviews on Google PlayStore

On-boarding experience is sub-optimal. After submitting the application, the delivery partners are not aware of the waiting time (for managing the demand-supply) for the application approval

The Delivery Partners are not aware of the reason for which they are blocked — the delivery partners are unaware of the policies for temporary/permanent block details and what should they avoid getting blocked.
The Delivery Partners who stay in different locations than the delivery locations (far locations) have to start and end the day with no delivery which is sub-optimal

The Delivery Partners are not getting the settlement for the payment at the end of the day. They have a lack of idea of the incentives and daily payments when the settlement is done by the end of the week as they forget all the rides that they had taken in that week.
The Delivery Partners are not educated on the incentives for delivering during the rains(rain incentives) and the late—at night. There is a lack of clarity on the incentives for delivering in odd scenarios.
The Delivery Partners have raised some Wellness issues — sound volume being too high when used with the earphones

The Delivery Partners are not given extra incentives for delivering on narrow roads or high-density areas or heavy traffic areas. Most of the delivery partners restrain from going to these locations and cancel these delivery trips.

The Delivery Partners' locations are not changed based on their ratings over a period of time. Currently, the system uses a first-come-first-serve allocation strategy. This restricts us from keeping the high-performance delivery partner at dense locations having more orders to fulfill.
The Delivery Partners’ delivery fees are not changed with the increment in the petrol/diesel prices. This results in lower delivery partner availability when the prices are high.
With the payment model mapped to the distance traveled, the delivery partners are not paid for the distance traveled for the pick-up. This leads to delivery partners not accepting the deliveries that are far away from the pick-up.

The Delivery Partners need to call for approval either using the MyGate app or phone number — this wastes a lot of time and our 10 min delivery promise is compromised.
The Delivery Partners’ are stopped by the security guards before door delivery and only allowed after the call — this wastes a lot of time for the pick-up for the next delivery

Problems faced by Dunzo Users

The User is charged extra fees for late-night/off-working hours deliveries — there is no option for the user to have this delivered in the morning at normal costs — the users are using other applications for making these orders.

Dunzo is unavailable during the late-night hours

High Delivery fees by dunzo during late night hours

The User’s Onboarding experience is broken with the launch of Dunzo Daily — the users are unaware of the difference between Stores and Daily. The users are not educated about the Courier Option
The User is unable to find his favorite / frequently ordered items easily. Currently, these are shown only on the cart screen.
The User has to manually approve the entry using the MyGate app every time for the delivery.
Though the name is Dunzo Daily — the users are not able to create daily orders — like Coconut and Milk
The User’s Address auto-detection is wrong and the user needs to type the location manually — this is leading to wrong order deliveries and cancellations of the order.

Business Problems & Opportunities

Growth Opportunities

Currently, Dunzo is operational in 4 Indian Cities — Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, and Mumbai. In the context of each city where we are operational -

Ensuring High Availability of Delivery Partners at serviceable locations and newly added locations — optimizing the demand and supply
Ensuring the Merchants get the higher demands from the Dunzo platform — Reducing the Churn of merchants from the platform.
Quick Onboarding for the new Delivery Partners and removal of low performing delivery partners — Ensuring high quality of Drivers on the platform
Expansion and opening of more dark stores in strategic locations **
Increasing the commissions' revenue from the merchants **
Increasing the commissions' revenue from the delivery partners **
Increasing the warehouse income **

** Strategic & Long Term Opportunities

Operations Problems

Order Cancellations eat up to 20%-30% of the operational revenues — against the industry standard of 10% — 15%
Reduce the Delivery Cost of each delivery from Rs 45 to Rs 30 for the system **
Ensuring Proper demand and supply of the items in the Dark Stores **
Maintaining high quality and freshness for the groceries — vegetables/meat/poultry/fruits /milk items **
Delivery Partners are unable to find the location of the apartment/flat
Delivery Partner’s time wastage to acquire the approval for deliveries in gated communities
Reduce the cost of packing Items **
With the launch of Dunzo Daily — the merchant's orders have reduced in that area and this is leading to dissatisfaction and churn from the platform