A former Bombay Shaving Company exec is helping brands like boAt, MamaEarth go big on ecommerce ⁠— and he now wants to take it abroad

• GoKwik offers tools and solutions to direct-to-consumer (D2C) that offer better experience to users.
• Matrix Partners India led the company’s pre-Series A round, with participation from RTP Global.
• In its first year of operations, the company has set plans for international expansion.

The Indian ecommerce industry was growing exponentially last year as customers and several brands were embarking on the digital journey amidst the pandemic. But the show was largely run by giants like Amazon and Flipkart.

That’s when Chirag Taneja came up with the solution to help Indian brands to set up their own identity in the world of digital retail.

GoKwik, launched in January 2021, offers tools and solutions to direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands — that sell directly to customers through their own website — to offer better experience to users.

“If you look at D2C websites and compare it to the giants, you’ll realise that many things are broken. If e-commerce has to boom then someone will need to fix these experiences. That is what we do as a company,” Chirag Taneja, chief executive (CEO) and co-founder of GoKwik, told Business Insider.

Fundraise to international expansion — all planned out

GoKwik on Tuesday, September 7, announced a $5.5 million fundraise in order to expand its presence further. The pre-Series A round was led by Matrix Partners India, with participation of global investors like RTP Global.

Several marquee angel investors and serial entrepreneurs also participated in the round. This includes Jupiter’s Jitendra Gupta, Uni’s Nitin Gupta, AngelList India’s Utsav Somani, CarDekho’s Umang Kumar, Shaadi.com’s Anupam Mittal, Livspace’s Ramakant Sharma, OfBusiness’ Asish Mohapatra and more. Over 12 angels invested in the pre-Series A round.

GoKwik plans to use this funding to double its current workforce of 75 employees by 2022 and expand to other Southeast Asian countries that face the same ecommerce related challenges as India. The company has zeroed down on Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia for now.

The Gurugram-based company notes that they will have an early mover advantage if they start international expansion now.

For its international play, the company will focus on building local and central teams in the specific region and partner with local players. The technology and the product would largely remain the same for these markets, where cash-on-delivery would be a more common mode of payment.

The Gurgaon-based startup helps retailers overcome challenges of setting up online stores and provide better experience to their customers. The company claims to have processed over a million transactions since its launch.

Helping boAt, MamaEarth, LimeRoad and more

The e-commerce enabler has also added 75 customers to its bucket list, ranging from marketplaces to publicly listed companies and renowned D2C brands. This includes boAt, Mamaearth, The Man Company, Heads Up For Tails, LimeRoad, ManMatters, The Whole Truth, The Souled Store, and TCNS Clothing Co, which owns brands like W, Aurelia and Wishful.

Taneja noted that there are four legs of e-commerce — discovery, search/selection, conversion, retention. GoKwik is solving all these problems with its solution, as per Taneja. Ecommerce is expanding and one would need to use ecommerce enablers to bring the cost down, he added.

The company was founded by Taneja and Vivek Bajpai. Taneja has previously worked as the chief revenue officer of Bombay Shaving Company, assistant vice president at Yes Bank and founded a food tech company Ketchupp in 2015.

Bajpai, chief technology officer (CTO) and co-founder of GoKwik, was the head of technology at an adtech company SilverPush. Ankush Talwar, chief data scientist at GoKwik, is also part of the founding team. He previously was associated with Kognoz Research & Consulting, Quantiphi and Publicis.

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