Bringing Customers From Small Towns Online Through Group Buying, YCombinator Backed Gobillion Witnesses Outlier Growth in India
Since the pandemic, the e-commerce industry in India has grown massively riding on increased adoption by customers, with 80% smartphone users coming from small towns. However, the legacy e-commerce model is built to serve the needs of India's premium customers from large cities. It excludes the intrinsic needs of customers from small towns in India, which account for roughly 90% of India's population.
Gobillion, launched with the mission of making e-commerce social and accessible for the next 500 million customers in tier 2+ towns in India, enables customers to socially group buy together with other customers and unlock massive discounts on their grocery and daily essentials.
Gobillion co-founders, Roshan Farhan and Kulapradip Bharali, are IIM-NIT alumni and are close friends.
The company has witnessed outlier growth in its operating markets with 10.4x growth in GMV over the last 8 months, currently at a $12M annualized GMV run-rate, with industry leading customer retention metrics. They are backed by YCombinator and top tier global VC funds.
In India's small towns, dynamics are very different - people live in close-knit communities, their shopping decisions are influenced by family and friends. Gobillion augments this real life behaviour and brings the social experience to an app through their global first product, Gobillion Shopping Rooms.
Gobillion plans to expand across India and SE Asia, bringing the benefits of e-commerce to everybody. They are targeting a $100 billion market ripe for disruption.
The co-founders, who belong to small towns in India, realized that there is a big gap in the market when they saw their friends struggle with traditional e-commerce apps. The product wasn't built for them, and they missed the "social aspect in shopping". We have seen successful group buying models like Pinduoduo in China and Facily in Brazil.
With its outlier growth, the company is planning to raise their Series A investment round to maintain their growth and launch in new markets.
With the industry leading growth they are witnessing and the first movers advantage, Gobillion is looking at becoming the market leader in the social commerce market in India and SE Asia.
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