A lot of advertising agencies don’t like Dunzo because their clients send them our creatives asking them to do something similar: Sai Ganesh, Dunzo

• Dunzo has recently launched a 360 degree campaign to promote its new offering Dunzo Daily that it has launched in Bangalore.
• We speak to Sai Ganesh, Head - Brand at Dunzo who tells us about the new offering and the campaign and tells us about their marketing journey so far.

The quick commerce segment is heating up with more and more platforms battling it out to make life more convenient for its consumers. In the past few months, we have seen platforms like Grofers, Swiggy and Dunzo try to race each other into delivering groceries to you first. Meanwhile, what might make one platform win over the other is how they choose to communicate with their consumers.

Dunzo, that launched Dunzo Daily in nine areas of Bengaluru in July launched with the promise of delivering products to your doorsteps within 15 minutes. It now has a fool-proof plan to make itself heard. Last week, we saw Dunzo launch a film, the first in a series, featuring actor Sunny Deol. And to make sure that its message reaches its target audiences, the platform has come up with a 360 degree campaign to make the right kind of noise.

The campaign

“This is a repositioning exercise for Dunzo which has primarily been known for its quick pick-up and drop service for all categories. But now we're trying to focus on positioning Dunzo as the best delivery service to get your groceries fresh and fast. And since it's primarily a Bangalore campaign to begin with, we're looking to scale operations in Bangalore. It’s a city that has multiple user personas, there’s the native audience who have lived here for the longest period of time and then there are people who have moved into the city from other parts of the country for work. Our campaign is aimed at addressing all the different user personas,” said Sai Ganesh, Head - Brand at Dunzo.


The campaign, which will feature a host of stars from both Hindi and Kannada movies, is aimed at highlighting the hassle of ordering groceries and how Dunzo will solve the problem for its users.

In the past few months, we have also observed new-age players making use of nostalgia to reach out to consumers. So is Dunzo worried the new campaign will be compared to CRED’s IPL ads? “Not at all. We started working on this campaign last year, even before CRED’s second phase of campaign. I think the campaigns look similar because both the teams at CRED and Dunzo are largely digital-natives. We understand what works on Instagram, Twitter and the social media. We don't think TV commercials or Outdoor creatives first. Doing unexpected things on social media has a huge payoff and that's the reason why there's a similar train of thought between the two and that's just because we know what works on social media,” he explained.

The growth of Dunzo Daily

Since July, Dunzo Daily has been witnessing around 25% growth week on week. To fulfill its promise of delivery in 19 minutes, Dunzo is leveraging mini-warehouses strategically located across each neighborhood in the city.

But then, a few other players in the segment are also speeding up their delivery game, so how will Dunzo make sure consumers choose them over their competitors, and what role will communication play there? “Our content speaks for itself. The kind of content we've created and the mediums we’re using help us stand out. We also have an audio signature tune now. And this sonic identity will be a part of the product. On the app, when the delivery partner leaves the store or is at your doorstep, you will get a notification. We're trying to differentiate the brand at every touch-point possible and marketing is not going to be left behind as well,” added Ganesh.

For Dunzo, the plan for now is to grow Dunzo Daily to 4X in Bangalore, to provide a superior experience, set up more stores so that the delivery time gets further reduced. Once the model gets proven in Bangalore, the platform will take it to other cities.

Dunzo’s marketing game

Dunzo had been launched back in 2015 as a WhatsApp group where CEO Kabeer Biswas would himself get things delivered to people on the group. Within four months, the initiative blew up on Whatsapp and Biswas had close to 10,000 users, without spending any money on advertising. For a long time, the growth Dunzo witnessed was solely owing to word-of-mouth. However, as the team started scaling up, Dunzo focused on building an in-house brands team. Today Dunzo does all its creative work in-house.

On what has worked in their favor from a marketing perspective, Ganesh said, “We haven't hired an agency, everything is done in-house. Building this team of digital-natives who are so good at everything they do, has been a very important part of our journey. An interesting thing about our social media journey is, people organically used to say good things about Dunzo and our delivery partners and we decided to use this tactic where we would incentivize people to say good things about Dunzo, which is pretty much what our Twitter game is. If you say something good about us, we make a wordplay on your name and that is something our consumers look forward to.”

Dunzo is also one of the players on social media that has aced moment marketing and its take on topical events usually keeps it in the news too, which has helped them build their brand narrative too. “Over the last few years, we have been able to leverage moment marketing well, to the extent that someone was telling me that advertising agencies don’t like Dunzo because they get our creatives sent to them by their clients who ask them to come up with similar creatives. It’s a big compliment for us. We have become the leaders of moment marketingand that is creating a real pull for the brand,” said Ganesh.

Watch the full interview here: