LazyLad: Connecting the Neighborhood Retailers & Customers through Frugal Innovation





LazyLad: Connecting the Neighborhood Retailers & Customers through Frugal Innovation Date: Thursday , December 03, 2015 Saurabh Singla grew up watching his mother order her daily groceries over the phone to the nearest kirana store and a delivery boy delivering them. But little did she know the availability of the product before ordering, which sometimes made her call other neighborhood kirana stores or go to a farther marketplace to fetch them. Apart from that, some of the big e-Commerce players in the space started killing these small shops. Watching this incipient dismay for years, Saurabh along with his friends Paresh Goel and Ajay Sethi decided to organize this unorganized sector and created LazyLad as an n-commerce (neighborhood commerce) platform where people can order their groceries from the nearest mom & pop or kirana store, from the comfort of their homes. The Beginning Saurabh and Paresh, former IIT Guwahati graduates, donned the entrepreneurial hat soon after college and created two ventures - Angular Technologies and PrepGuru. But little did they know that the fierce competition and their unpreparedness would deflate their dreams. Driven by the suggestions of the industry know-hows, the duo then joined hands with Ajay (another IIT alumnus) and scrutinized the e-Commerce segment that\'s been shining since sometime. Hunting for the options, they found out that the other side of the coin entailed a bitter picture to explain, where the mom and pop stores had started waning one after the other, owing to the breeding online marketplaces, thereby orphaning many homes which were relying on them. The same cognizance lured them to create an out-of-the-box application, which would successfully bridge the gap between buyers and retailers. This is when LazyLad came into being as a platform architected perfectly for the lazy as well as the busy people who love to buy from the nearest kirana stores instead of online shopping, while it also brings mom and pop shops on to a mobile platform to leverage neighborhood commerce to the customers who are just 1-2 kilometers away. Backed by massively asset-light model that makes the transactions hassle-free and a passion to orchestrate the highly unorganized N-Commerce market, the neighborhood market on mobile endows the customers with a wide range of options to select from their menu, which consists of six segments - bakery & confectionery, fruits & vegetables, flowers, daily groceries, meats & seafood and stationery. Though, the logistics is handled by the retailers themselves, frugal innovation assures a free home delivery within 90 minutes. Helping the merchants to seize more customers, LazyLad serves as a window to the retailers, providing an access to the real-time inventory on the deliveries and other business-critical factors. The Success Saga While starting up possesses many benefits, it also brings with it an ambit of difficulties, which can make or break an entrepreneur\'s dream. LazyLad struggled to alleviate multiple demons-in-disguise when it initially hit the markets, it soon was embraced by one of the finest seed accelerators - GHV Accelerator (Green House Ventures Accelerator), which served as a catalyst in supporting the venture to combat the challenges efficiently. \"We are really fortunate that an accelerator leveraged us at such an initial stage. Immediately after getting this support, we were selected in NASSCOM\'s 10000 Startups initiative and even travelled to the U.S. under its program - Innotrek 2015,\" proclaims a proud Saurabh, the Co-Founder & CEO of LazyLad. Laying a firm foothold in the market with a seed funding of $100,000 from the accelerator itself, the venture never looked back since then and has raised its second round of funding from three overseas investors in just two months and is rearing up to close its third round, very soon. The Stairway to Eminence What started with just five orders, has grown 10-20 times (its competitors) to a track record of delivering 600-700 orders a day. According to Saurabh, this rising glory is also accredited to the 15 best minds that are obsessed with imparting their own brand of entrepreneurial thoughts into their endeavors. In order to keep the creative juices flowing, the young organization has imbibed a hierarchy-free culture, which encourages learning and an environment that stimulates the sense of ownership within an employee. The open culture also allows the crew to wear different roles. \"Apart from that, the varied opportunities to deploy a lazy POS system in the unorganized n-commerce market plays a major role in motivating our staff,\" adds Saurabh. With a dream to establish a sustainable business by the end of 2016, LazyLad is currently aiming to onboard one million retailers to its already growing numbers. Footed firmly in Gurgaon and Chandigarh, the company is also planning to go global with 12 international regions. Panel: KeyManagement: SaurabhSingla, Co-Founder & CEO Before founding his innovations - PrepGuru, Angular Technologies and LazyLad - Saurabh served as a trainee in the eminent companies like Appin Security Group and Samsung India and was a part of Oracle technical staff as well. *PareshGoel, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer* Paresh started his entrepreneurial journey with PrepGuru and played a major role in helping Saurabh to realize his dreams of Angular Technologies and LazyLad. *Ajay Sethi, Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer* Before heading the LazyLad venture as the Chief Business Officer, Ajay has worked as an assistant manager in Hero MotoCorp and also served as an intern in two other renowned names like Clyde Bergemann Power Group and India YAMAHA Motor. *Headquarter:* Gurgaon