Deligram Raises $2.5m to Supercharge ‘Mudir Dokans’ into eCommerce Hubs
Deligram started its journey in 2017 with one simple goal: inventing a retail channel that is localized to best serve the needs of consumers in Bangladesh & at the same time overcome the infrastructural challenges that are a part of our ecosystem.
Our unique omni-channel eCommerce model allows customers to take advantage of all the perks of online eCommerce & provides the trust, relationship & convenience of shopping from their nearest “Mudir Dokan,” or traditional neighborhood convenience store.
Today, we are excited to announce our $2m Series-A round of funding from a network of institutional & angel investors including Skycatcher, Everblue Management & Sonia Bashir Kabir. Including our $500k seed round raised in 2017, this brings our total raised to date to $2.5m. It is also an honor for me to have our family business, Rahimafrooz Group, onboard with us as a strategic incubator & investor. Rahimafrooz is a 65 year old diversified conglomerate with business units across renewable & storage energy, ISPs, electronics & grocery retail chain stores (Agora).
Our team has spent the last 6 months piloting our new approach of serving our customer’s growing demand via our offline-to-online (O2O) neighborhood “mudir dokan” agents in Comilla & Dhaka. We have successfully delivered over 15,000 orders ranging from 55" LED TVs to almost every brand of smartphone available in Bangladesh.
Customers can order from the Deligram mobile app or website & have their desired products delivered to their homes within 24–96 hours. Customers can also use our network of neighborhood dgAgents as a pickup point for free deliveries. This also saves customers the countless calls from delivery personnel who are trying to schedule a delivery time & find the home address amidst the urban chaos of our cities. Our network of agents also serve as a drop-off point for easy customer returns — no more hassle of scheduling & sending returns to Deligram.
More than 75% of our customers are people who are shopping online for the very first time. Each dgAgent outlet is equipped with a tablet & print catalog that allows the customers to browse through our selection of products. They are also trained to help customers place an order easily. Our dgAgent shop owners get access to more than 15,000 Deligram products through our platform that they can sell & deliver to their communities. This allows them to also increase their incomes by earning a share of the products & services they deliver.
We believe that the “mudir dokan” is an essential fabric of commerce in Bangladesh and as technologies evolve to revolutionize retail we want to continue empowering our local mom & pop shops as an essential part of the future of retail.
We are currently focused on growing our network & distribution channel of dgAgents across multiple cities across Bangladesh. We also have some exciting IOT R&D projects in the pipeline that we can’t wait to unveil over the next few months. If this is something that excites you, come join us in building our dreams into reality (especially, if you’re a Financial Analyst, Senior Software Engineer or Data Analyst) — reach out to us at hello@deligram.com.
On behalf of the team at Deligram,
Waiz Rahim
CEO
