The trio Alok Chawla, Neeta Chawla and Virendra Kumar Chouhan along with their tagline “choti dukano ko online lana hain” (an initiative to bring all small business owners under an online platform), although they had a Nobel business idea, it failed to charm the sharks.
Shark Tank India S3 Ep 47, Tuesday: Shark Tank India season 3 has been a hub of multiple ideas and pitches. In this season’s episode 47, sharks like Anupam Mittal, Vineeta Singh, Aman Gupta, Namita Thapar, Deepinder Goyal were presented with three unique and innovative ideas. However, the one that caught their attention was a trio’s idea of innovation in bringing small business that covers around 25% of GDP under online shopping platform and said “jo badal paya hain, wahi tik paya hain” (those who could change themselves survived). They even mentioned two reasons why consumers do not buy from those small shops, that is, because they can’t sell on online platforms because they can’t afford the commissions.
Virendra further states that through Kiko Live business owners can make their shopping website and sell through it also they do not have to pay any commissions for any product they are selling. Kiko will list the sellers’ products on the ONDC platform so that their sales can be multiplied.
Neeta says that Kiko launched a seller website in August’23 and 1000+ sellers have already associated with them. They aim to make every local shop an online e-shop. And their ask is for Rs.1 crore for 1% equity making the valuation of the company 100 crores.
Vineeta questions about the reason behind the name ‘Kiko’ and founder Alok replies that the name ‘Kiko’ is taken from a Japanese word meaning happy which is also the trademark of the company.
Namita asked about the inspiration behind the company. Alok replies with the story of how the lockdown changed the habits of consumers and how they shifted their attention more to online shopping rather than buying from small businesses in their neighbourhood which those business owners had to suffer a major setback and loss. Through Kiko Live they want to help small owners to retain their customers in the long term and even grow their business.
Vineeta counters Alok’s comment with “Char saal se Jio se lekar Udaan tak sab lage huye hain mehnat karne mein Toh aap kaise keh rehe hain apne covid ke time socha.” (It’s been four years that companies like Jio, Udaan have been working on it. How can you say that you thought about it during covid?)
Responding to Vineeta, Virendra added that Kiko Live connects the sellers with consumers with live interaction through video or audio calls for which they have been granted a patent for their ‘system for live interaction shopping’ so that customers can place orders with them easily. Most of the owners’ 10% income comes from online live interaction marketing.
Vineeta raised a question, “India mein video commerce chala nahi hain kyu ki consumers nahi aana chahte” ( video commerce did not work in India because the consumers were not interested)
Shark Anupam questions, “aap exactly unko kya bechte ho, aur who apko paise kis cheez ke liye dete hain” ( what exactly do you sell them, for what do they pay you for?)
Alok then gives the demo of how the application works.
He demonstrate that the business owners can upload pictures of their products while the customers can choose the products they want and cart it and easily buy it just like any other shopping application. Kiko Live provides delivery for the shop owners with a nominal subscription of Rs.100, allowing them to pay online and cash-on-delivery options.
Deepinder founder of Zomato comments, “aisi 100 companies aa chuki hain” (there are hundreds of companies like this) and he points out one of the major problems faced by online retail business owners is the Fulfilment Rate alongside the Failure Rate, that is, how many times the customers have not received the items they ordered while for retail online business like this the failure rate is as high as 30% and also said, “yaha haar point mein failure hain” (There’s failure in every point).
Before working for Kiko Live, Alok Chawla and Neeta Chawla had worked on various ventures like Zipcash which is a prepaid wallet, and Gizmobaba where they used to sell co-branded products with the help of influencers but the business was shut down because of Corona and TikTok ban in India. Since 2021 they have been working for bringing their vision with Kiko Live come into reality alongside Virendra Kumar Chouhan who is also the co-founder and CTO of Kiki Live.
The owners always had the thought in mind of “kya problem hum solve kar sakte hain” (which problem can we solve) and worked on it tirelessly.
Kiki Live has successfully raised investments three times. In 2021 they raised 90 lakhs with a 9 crores valuation, in 2021 end they raised 7 crores with a 28 crores company valuation and raised 5.5 crores with an 80 crores valuation leading to a total of 13.4 crores raised all total.
Their Sept’23 revenue was 3 lacs, while the annual revenue of 2021-2023 was 6 lacs and the revenue of 2022-2023 was 25 lacs.
Namita was the first one to make a decision. Although the sharks were happy with the business initiative but were not ready to be a part of the business yet.
She said, “mere liye 80 crores justified nahi hota hai” (the amount of 80 crores is not justifiable) and denied giving any offers to the entrepreneurs.
Vineeta mentions that in this kind of retail business, large companies have capital. “badi company vs choti company thoda tough hota hain” (It would be really hard to fight with large companies). Whale companies like Jio are already working on cataloguing businesses under ONDC and it would be tough to go against big companies like them. So she also backed out from giving any offers.
Anupam was furious because according to him Kiki Live at an earlier stage has overpriced itself. Deepinder and Aman also said “I am out” leaving the entrepreneurs disheartened.
