The world is experiencing a surge of startups as well as entrepreneurs across verticals and industries. Startups are naturally very passionate and excited about their businesses, but communicating this passion as a viable venture for investors is equally crucial. Building a workable and scalable idea is fundamental to this process in the first place. You should have trust and belief in your idea, and also it needs to be applicable and functional in the marketplace. The business model needs to be scalable and relatable to other industries as well. Insights Success team interviewed Mr. Samar Singla, Co-founder & CEO of Jugnoo, on how Jugnoo sets itself apart and changed the startup world. We are pleased to share the inspiring words and insightful answers from them.
- Please tell us about the journey of Jugnoo from its initial days, the growth, and its Expansion.
Established in the year 2014 in Chandigarh, Jugnoo is primarily an on-demand hyper-local transport and logistics app that thrives on its expansive network of auto-rickshaws across the country. Disrupting the three-wheeler transport segment in India, its objective is to systematize the highly unorganized auto-rickshaw sector by aggregating them through technology, thereby making it more efficient.
Jugnoo has evolved over the past three years in terms of its business operations, technical advancements and verticals. It has expanded across other verticals of on-demand and hyper-local space. The idea is to establish Jugnoo as a key player in the market for providing all kinds of hyper local deliveries. Our vision is to build the first true hyper local marketplace in India that can deliver anything to anyone.
With a market presence in more than 35 cities of India, 4.3 million registered users and 65,000 auto drivers, Jugnoo is trending at 30K daily transactions. The company is growing month on month consistently at 10%.
The plan is to build our network PAN India with a focus on tier II and tier III cities of the country while disrupting the auto-rickshaw sector with technology.
2. What inspired you to come up with this idea, which changed the Startup World?
Jugnoo is Chinmay’s and my brainchild. We launched it at a leading college fest (PECFEST) in Chandigarh as an experiment where we offered free rides to people. The response received at the fest was phenomenal which made us sense the potential of such a service in India and led to the start of connecting auto-rickshaws with passengers, further utilizing it for logistics.
One of the problems faced by the city people for daily commuting is finding a ride that is easily available, affordable and quick to board. And when it comes to driver issues, bargaining and idle times are the two things that kill their productivity. Jugnoo entered the market to solve the problem of commuting and increasing the efficiency of auto drivers. It creates ease of hailing an auto rickshaw by providing doorstep easy transport service.
3. Briefly tell us about yourself.
An alumnus of IIT Delhi and a Physicist by education, I founded Jugnoo to solve India’s hyperlocal commerce problem. We bring in the core competencies to the working model of the company. I have also worked at IBM and CERN.
My previous successful venture is Click Labs established in 2011, which is a profitable SaaS technology service provider.
4. What are the unique services/ products provided by Jugnoo?
Currently, it has two major verticals – Rides and Deliveries. Operating under the aegis of Jugnoo, it offers diverse services like passenger rides (Rides), ready to eat meals (Meals), B2B and B2C deliveries including groceries, fruits, and vegetables (Grocery), restaurant food (Menus). The current addition is Fatafat – an on-demand concierge service provider that caters to all kinds of delivery needs of a user.
Jugnoo Delivery’s, another major service is the B2B logistics vertical, an omnichannel, and on-demand hyper-local logistics service that enables vendors to deliver products to their customers as and when they want while ensuring a seamless delivery experience.
Jugnoo also started integrating Unified Payment Interface (UPI) by the name of ‘Jugnoo Pay’, to encourage cashless economy – a step taken by Government of India in 2016.
5. Kindly brief us about your strategies behind those services/products. If possible, kindly give us a one line unique quote that best describes your company.
Jugnoo started its journey as an auto aggregator and by scaling up its operational and technical advancements; it became the hyper local multipurpose app, which can be used for various transactional activities in day-to-day life.
Realizing that Jugnoo needed to be backed by technology for smoother operations; we developed an in-house technology as a powerful management platform. To overcome the challenges of on-time deliveries, we introduced advanced features like route optimization, geo-analytics, and auto-allocation.
All our offerings ride on the same backbone – the idea to increase the income of driver fleet by increasing utilization. By engaging auto drivers in both rides and deliveries, the company carefully balances demand and supply in a way, to manage the peak and low times very efficiently.
“Following the stride of the latest trends coupled with the latest technology, Jugnoo is working towards being a one-stop solution for hyper local needs of people.”
6. How do you work on your long-term relationship with your clients?
Jugnoo uses the latest technology to constantly improve its processes and provide fastest solutions to its clients through its SaaS offerings. It builds its strength with the tech at its backbone, having in-house developers, continuously improving and updating, for better performance. We have proactive teams providing timely response to clients and resolving the matters quickly. We look at maintaining a healthy, long-term relationship with clients by always being there, stepping in their shoes and walking their journey with them.
7. Kindly brief us about the most satisfactory experience with a client. What kind of game-changing services have you provided to them?
Jugnoo aims to provide its services as per the customer needs and current trends. One of our Delhi based client dealing in organic milk, located far away from the city was having troubles with delivering the product. Jugnoo provided the convenient way of inter and intra city logistics solutions at a very economical cost. The merchant can simply log on to the Delivery app, request the pickup, track the delivery and see if the delivery is made in time. This Jugnoo service helped to deliver fresh organic milk to the doorstep of the people, making the entire process easier.
As a game changer, Jugnoo uses the same fleet of autos for passenger rides and deliveries. Drivers when not moving passengers are helping businesses by delivering products to their customers.
8. What challenges have Jugnoo faced on the road to success? Please share with us the issues a company in this field generally faces.
At the time of launching, the challenge that Jugnoo faced was introducing technology to the auto-rickshaw drivers. Most of the auto-rickshaw drivers came from a section of society which was not familiar with the technology-based platform that they were expected to use. Convincing them to use the tech-enabled platform to earn their livelihood was a challenge. Jugnoo invested a lot of time and effort in educating and training the drivers on using the technology. It constantly strived to simplify the usability of the software application, with the aim to make it as simple as possible. Jugnoo technical team developed GUI that displayed the script of the vernacular, to further make the software application user-friendly.
The other common challenge faced was getting the right talent and people. We hired people at a fast pace that resulted in bad hiring and waste of time and effort. Therefore we slowed down the process of hiring and focused on coaching and developing the employees.
Competition is also something that we faced as a challenge. We entered the market at the time where other major players had already set their foothold. We focus on growth and fundamentals, offering services beyond auto rides to on-demand hyper local deliveries.
9. What are the values and factors that you attribute to, for your success?
The ability to give my best while being disconnected from outcomes. Obsession with outcomes puts fear in people and they can’t focus on solving the problem at hand. The other extreme is not to worry about future at all and not work towards making your dreams a reality. It is tough to work hard and still take failure as the most common outcome. Yet, this is the life of entrepreneurs. It takes practice but can be done.
10. What is the greatest strength of Jugnoo? How is it helping to move forward with the future plans?
We believe in sustainable development model which comes from steady growth and resilience to market conditions. With constant innovation in terms of our business model, our tech integration, management and communication strategies based on customer feedback, we keep the stimulating development at every stage. Another thing that works well for us is that we move fast, make mistakes and learn from them. We are constantly striving to bring new products to the market and scaling our existing products. We take every mistake as an opportunity to bring something new and unique.
With the strong belief in “Execution” of the ideas, the company intends to further extend its reach in India, and introduce each of its services across those cities. Its mission is to become a prominent brand in the hyper-local segment in Tier II and Tier III cities in the near future by creating a diverse transportation system that benefits all involved.
