Hailing the team of Mukesh Singh, Raj Pandey and Vikash Kumar as role models for their sheer hard work, grit and perseverance, the star-studded jury unanimously voted for ZopSmart’s founders in the secret ballot on Tuesday.
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The jurors underscored the qualities of perseverance and resilience as the topmost traits while commending the hugely successful comeback by founding team.
ETtechTerming the journey of a startup as one with “ups and downs, perhaps more down than up,” Singh said, “we have learnt to embrace failure as a path to eventual success.”
The team draws inspiration from the likes of Thomas Alva Edison and Swami Vivekananda “who have taught us to keep trying and not make the same mistake twice,” Singh said on winning the coveted award.
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Five-year-old ZopSmart is a bootstrapped venture that provides tools to build e-commerce businesses, omnichannel businesses and digital commerce for conventional retailers. It provides services across geographies from Singapore to Japan, Europe, and the US in addition to India.
However, the journey has not been an easy one for the gritty founders. ZopSmart, which is now a business-to-business (B2B) venture, was a grocery delivery firm ZopNow in an earlier avatar. It failed to garner enough investor interest and eventually shut down after seven years of operations.
Singh, Pandey, and Kumar would decide to pivot away from grocery retailing in 2018 as bigger and well-funded competitors emerged including SoftBank-backed Grofers (now Blinkit) and BigBasket alongside Amazon and Flipkart.
“I want to recognise the efforts of businesses that have been able to turn around their operations and stayed relevant through perseverance — such as ZopSmart, which has been able to pivot its business model after many years. They have proved to be a role model, demonstrating that you can always course correct and innovate if there is a passion to stay relevant and agile,” said jury member Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart group.
The ZopSmart team undertook a transformation by using the core technology they built earlier for the business-to-consumer (B2C) avatar ZopNow and started deploying it for enterprise clients. Eventually, they shut down the consumer business, bought back all the equity from existing investors and transferred the intellectual property to the new entity, which was formed in 2018.
Remarking that “it’s tough not to vote for somebody like this,” one of the jurors said, “the founders are clearly among the most hardworking people I know. I am sure I would have given up if I did not get it right after seven years of grocery retailing, but for them to restart and achieve this level of profitability…”
In the year ended March 31, 2023, ZopSmart clocked Rs 300 crore in revenue with about Rs 200 crore in net profit. While in FY22, it recorded revenues of Rs 190 crore with net profits of Rs 137 crore.
While ZopSmart’s size tipped the scales in its favour, several jurors also made a pitch for the drone maker Ideaforge Technology, which had recorded a hugely successful public listing earlier this year.
Pandey, who is ZopSmart’s chief executive, said, “Our past has taught us that along with relentless focus on customer value proposition, we have to also deliver the trifecta of growth, margin, and profitability.”
Other contenders:
Founders: Amit Gupta, Naveen Dachuri, RK Misra
ETtech(From left) The Yulu team – Naveen Dachuri, Amit Gupta, RK Misra
Current Venture: Yulu
A micro-mobility platform, Yulu offers e-bikes on rent in last-mile locations at public transport hubs across Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The company also partners with delivery companies to deploy its fleet on a rental basis for gig workers.
Founders: Aneesh Reddy, Anant Choubey, Sridhar Bollam
ETtech(From left) Capillary Technologies cofounders Aneesh Reddy, Anant Choubey and Sridhar Bollam
Current Venture: Capillary Technologies
The software-as-a-service startup provides end-to-end customer engagement solutions from consumer data platforms to loyalty programmes. The company helps its clients create actionable insights from consumer and business data.
Founders: Uttam Digga, Pranav Goel, Vikas Choudhary
ETtech(From left) Porter team – Vikas Choudhary, Uttam Digga, Pranav Goel
Current Venture: Porter
Porter provides on-demand logistics services to small and medium enterprises for shorter distances with larger trucks and smaller carriage vehicles. It also operates as a marketplace connecting individual customers and small businesses to fleet operators.
Founders: Ankit Mehta, Rahul Singh, Ashish Bhat
ETtech(From left) Ideaforge team – Ashish Bhat, Rahul Singh, Ankit Mehta
Current Venture: Ideaforge Technology
Ideaforge earns its revenue from drone hardware, software and allied services. The company offers drone procurement and leasing (Drones as a Service), in addition to subscriptions for its proprietary software and skilling and training services.