Do you remember the time when the world just stopped with the snap of a moment? No! We are not talking about some fictitious action movie but based on the true events of a global massacre. The year 2020 will forever be inscribed into our mind as the year when mother earth was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. It seemed humanity was under the deeper depths of the wrath of the Gods. The streets were filled with pandemonium and the surroundings were inflicted with disease-stricken air.
Millions lost their lives and millions were suffered by an enemy which can only be seen under the lens of a microscope. Time took us through a path where people lost their jobs and businesses were shut down with no hopes of opening soon, due to the lockdown. In India, the situation was critical due to the lack of proper healthcare assistance and the extreme exhaustion of doctors, nurses, and first responders.
The local market took a big hit and closed indefinitely citing curfews and lockdowns. Although the big companies managed to address the situation, this was never the case for small retailers. In these taxing times, a tech-savvy individual from Mumbai named Suumit Shah, came up with a creative idea to form a mobile app, which brings together all the local shopkeepers under one platform and creates their own e-commerce store in just 30 seconds.
Suumit co-founded the ’dukaan’ app with his friend Subhash Choudhury. The dynamic duo took it to their social media handles, where they shared that the idea of the venture started with just a ‘hello’ to each other. Business Outreach Magazine has always encouraged individuals who are resilient and have shown devotion towards the society. Suumit Shah biography includes the city of hopes, Mumbai, where he was born into a middle-class family. All his life, the ups, and downs taught him the courage to go for his dreams and aspirations.
With sheer dedication, the Dukaan app under the leadership of Suumit Shah and Subhash Choudhury were able to seek $ 6 million in funding from their investors. At present, in just after a year of its inception, the Dukaan app is calculated to hold a valuation worth of about Rs. 500 crores. Suumit believes in exposure and his main mission has always been to create an ecosystem for local shopkeepers to sell their products throughout India.
This was in the year 2010 when Suumit was in his first year of engineering and he was looking out to scale his skills and grow in his career. His regular visits to industrial hubs and networking with professionals gave him the clarity to pursue his entrepreneurial adventure. He experimented with digital marketing, google AdSense, affiliate marketing, and email marketing to draw more traffic towards his website. And when there is a will, there will always be a way.
Suumit Shah used to work at his uncle’s store situated in Satara, Maharashtra, and completed his degree in engineering from Sangli. His keen interest towards technology and the modern world also earned him the zeal to learn digital marketing and web designing. Suumit has worked in several multinational companies like McDonald’s, CRED, and several others. But his desire to make something of his own took him to establish Risemetric along with Subhash Choudhury.
The ‘Dukaan’ app launched in May of 2020, attracted merchants and shopkeepers with no programming expertise to start their online business. The O2O (offline turning to online) market was initiated to uplift the ‘Digital India’ plan and make the pathway for every business to come to the online space. In just a few weeks, the ‘Dukaan’ app had recorded more than 1.5 lakh online shops, where about 5 lakh products were included in the listing and the app was witnessing more than 75,000 orders.
Suumit Shah became a popular people’s entrepreneur with this exclusive idea and Subhash Choudhury played a pivotal role in networking about the startup. The mobile app supports more than 2 million businesses in small and medium strength with about 7 million products listed in 40 different groups and categories. The app also has wide coverage in more than 400 cities. With this, Business Outreach Magazine can say that ideas know no boundaries and that something that is for the betterment of society will always emerge victorious.
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