Goodbox democratizes mobile e-commerce through mini apps

By Anusha Ashwin

With the evolution of software technology, an app these days can be delivered faster than a pizza. Here is a Bengaluru-based company, Goodbox that gives small-time businesses an app presence within 5 minutes and at surprisingly 1/1000^th of the regular cost. Goodbox is best defined as a conversational m-commerce company catching on e-tailing of apps. The company enables small businesses to become e-commerce ready, on the Goodbox app, within minutes by providing seamless discovery, ordering and payment. The idea is to make consumers buy directly, over messaging, from their trusted stores across multiple categories without having to download multiple apps. Goodbox hosts thousands of Mini Apps of retail/kirana shops, enabling consumers to buy from them directly, without having to install multiple apps. More specifically the company uses a chat-based app to connect small and medium enterprises with customers. Goodbox, with a partner app and a consumer app, acts as a liaising enabler.

Founded by a seven-member strong team in 2014, Goodbox is headed by Abey Zachariah, who is the co-founder and CEO, with Mayank Bidawatka, Nithin Chandra, Mahesh Herle, Mohit Maheshwari, Charan Shetty as the other co-Founders. Voice&Data interacted with Mayank Bidawatka, who is key to managing Goodbox’ growth. Bidawatka was a part of the core team at RedBus, heading marketing and product for five years, post which he co-founded The Media Ant — a discovery engine for media options in India.

Talking about how Goodbox was incepted, Bidawatka opens up saying, “Goodbox is a pivot from our previous business that dealt with offering content in long distance buses. We introduced an app to help passengers track their bus’ location while they were at their boarding point. This app had a messaging functionality. We had passengers asking for help with hotels, bike rentals etc. We used to help close these requests by mediating deals with hotels. However, we realized that this model of mediation doesn’t scale. If we would hit 1,000 requests on a single day and it would not be feasible to mediate these discussions. Hence, the thought emerged to create an app that would help connect consumers directly with businesses. The only way to do that is to give businesses an app presence (mini app) that encapsulates their business details (including their menu/product list) and allows consumers to buy from multiple businesses on one app. Consumers are tired of downloading individual apps for businesses. You’ll notice many large brands having abysmal number of downloads. The reason is app fatigue.”

Mini apps in a jiffy

Goodbox’ intention is to help any business create a mini app for themselves and invite their customers to buy directly from them on the Goodbox app. Consumers can just use this one app to buy from 1000s of businesses – saving them the trouble of having to download multiple apps. “We don’t charge businesses any commission. We charge a minimal yearly fee for the mini app,” says Bidawatka. This mini app has all the features that an online player boasts of – ability to showcase the menu / prices, payments enabled, a workflow to order products / services and a messaging tab as well.

Goodbox has created a simple interface for the businesses. They need to enter some basic details of their business to get their mini app ready on the Android and iOS platform within minutes, explained Bidawatka. The company has devised a module that put together form a mini app. The module has in-built messaging, menu, payments, reward points, analytics, order management etc. all in one app. Any business that wants a mini app gets this functionality ready-made.

“Nobody in the online space gives the kind of control we equip our business partners with,” boasts Bidawatka. Throwing some additional details about the features of Goodbox, Bidawatka says, “Every shop has a person, product and a payment mechanism. If you were to re-create the same experience on an app, you need a messaging screen, a menu/product list with prices and an online payment gateway. That’s exactly how the design of all businesses on the Goodbox app is structured. Having messaging is like having a phone line. Everyone has one. However, we don’t encourage customers to chat with businesses. In most cases chat is inefficient and can slow you down. Hence, you’ll notice that most of the businesses on the Goodbox platform have a menu/product & price list so that customers get answers without having to ask any questions.”

Goodbox charges business enterprises a SaaS fee of Rs 999 per year for the mini app and a 1.99% for the online payments through their mini app. The company has already clocked more than 100,000 downloads on their Android app within a year, and 10,000 users on the iOS app. On the business front, Goodbox also gives analytics on usage patterns of customers, product orders and history.

Goodbox at the moment has a large user base in Bengaluru. It’s founding team has laid out plans to sign-up merchants from other cities as well. “We are now trying to verticalize all services from restaurants, retail stores, bus ticketing and much more. Businesses see great value in what we provide them. Nobody gave them an app presence this fast and this cheap. Many consumers are now using the service to reach out to their favourite stores too,” excitedly expressed Bidawatka. 

Series A and a strategic acquisition

The company from the word go has had the investors looking at it in close angle. In November 2015, Goodbox raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners. As a seed fund, the company earlier raised an undisclosed amount from The Manipal Group, Aprameya Radakrishna (co-Founder of TaxiforSure that was acquired by Ola) and Charan Padamraju (co-Founder of redbus).

“Our investors saw value in us providing an app presence in the form of mini apps to businesses. It’s a unique proposition that businesses have never been presented prior to Goodbox. We also are a front-end for consumers to buy from multiple businesses, making us the only one of its kind in the world to have such a solution. The investors also saw a value in the team, that has seasoned entrepreneurs and rich startup experience under their belt,” affirms Bidawatka.

Just two months after the company raised its Series A funds, Goodbox was in news for good reasons. The company acquired Kiran Shastri and Mayank Shah-owned startup called SmartPocket for an undisclosed amount. Commenting on this acquisition, Bidawatka said, “The SmartPocket team was very talented and tenacious. During our discussions with them, we realized that we share a similar vision and it made sense to join forces to empower millions of SMEs to come online. We are on a mission to build very strong mobile capabilities and this is a step towards that objective.”

Bidawatka and his team will use the funds to meet their objective, i.e., to build a world-class product and to build traction on the business side. “We will expand to other cities by the end of the year. We already have some key categories on the app. We intend to expand on some other daily commerce categories. Currently, the most important aspect for us is to create a world class product that drives immense value to our business partners who want a mini app,” aspires Bidawatka.