Updated on July 26, 2023

Disruption -</noun> the action of completely changing the traditional way that an industry or market operates by using new methods or technology.

Usage: “No industry is immune to digital disruption.”

When Amazon started as an online book store way back in the 90s, Jeff Bezos knew that he wanted to disrupt not just the traditional book distribution industry; he also wanted to make E-commerce a household phenomenon. And did he succeed? Oh boy, he did!!

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Fast forward to 2022, and the global E-commerce market has reached a value of close to $13 Trillion, according to this report by IMARC, and E-commerce companies like Alibaba, Apple, Amazon, and eBay have all become household names. There is no going back, and this digital disruption is here to stay, that much everyone agrees upon.

And what about India, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world? With a GDP growth of close to 8.2%, India is growing fast, and E-commerce giants across the world are swooping down on the Indian market like never before. And the Indian E-commerce industry is booming too. 

Header - Indias GDP growth

Image source; Statista

So it is no surprise that more and more Indian businesses are going online since it is more a matter of survival than just good business sense. But what about the small mom-and-pop establishments? These businesses are traditionally owned by small Indian businessmen who cannot afford the millions of dollars that the E-commerce giants spend on building and promoting their websites.

Enter Dukaan. Dukaan is a platform that helps small businesses and homepreneurs set up their own E-commerce businesses without the need to know how to code and by using just their smartphones. And with the number of smartphone users in India as high as 500 million, what we see with Dukaan is nothing sort of a revolution, especially in the Indian E-commerce industry.

The Dukaan story 

It all began close to a decade ago, way back in 2013, when Suumit Shah, co-founder of Dukaan, sent a Facebook message to Subhash Choudhary, who was making waves already as a Digital marketer. Both Subash and Suumit met up and talked, and the rest, as they say, is startup history.

Their first venture together was a digital marketing agency, which was a resounding success and got clients that paid as much as two crore rupees. Later, both Suumit and Sourabh went on to create a SaaS product company called Rankz which was able to scale to 1 Million in Annual Recurring Revenue within a year. But a little while later, the pandemic hit, and everything changed.

People were forced to stay indoors, and the small shop owners, who form one of the key pillars of the Indian economy, suddenly found themselves without any customers. Suumit and Sourabh both felt extremely bad about what was happening to these small business owners, and they decided to do something about it.

“The Dukaan App ” was thus born. The team that worked on Rankz also helped build the app, and soon after it was launched, the app saw 2.7 million small shop owners register themselves within a span of 2 months.

 In small grocery stores, housewives opening upside businesses, and restaurants in small towns, the clientele usually involved the Indian business who wanted to take their business online without knowing how to code or build a website.  

Today, Dukaan has over 7 million products listed across 40 categories of business, with close to 700,000 orders being placed through the Dukaan app. The company has attracted venture capital from big names such as Haresh Chawla (Network 18) and Sandeep Tandon (Freecharge) and is truly making in India for the world.

How to list your products on the Dukaan app

Step 1: Go to web.mydukaan.io and enter your phone number. Click on Login.

Step 2: Enter the OTP you have received, and follow the on-screen instructions to set up your Business name, Business Address, category, etc.

Step 3: Add products to your Dukaan store, for instance, a table lamp, along with the price details and a product description. You can add multiple product categories, along with prices, easily from the Dukaan console.

Step 4:  Set up a payment method. Your options include Dukaan Pay, Razor Pay, or Cash on Delivery. Keep your UPI ID, account number, and IFSC code handy, and set up the payment method by following the simple instructions.

Step 5: Your Dukaan store is now ready, and you can now share your store link with your customers. To start things off, share the store/product links with anyone over WhatsApp.

Step 6: As soon as you get a new order, you will be notified about the same, along with the customer name, address, mobile number, etc. Now all you have to do is deliver the order to the customer’s address and mark your order as “Delivered.”

add products

The Kommunicate advantage

Now that you have built your online store on Dukaan, it is time to take it to the next level by installing the Kommunicate plugin on your Dukaan store.

Simply navigate to the “Plugins” section on the Dukaan website (www.mydukaan.io) and choose the “Customer support” category. You will see the Kommunicate chatbot listed here, and all you now need to do is click on “Install plugin.”

Listing in dukaan

Once installed, your Dukaan store will come alive with a chatbot that will handle all of the repetitive queries for you, among other things. Here are some of the key reasons why the Kommunicate chatbot is a must for your Dukaan.

  • No-code chatbot: Kommunicate’s chatbots can be built without the need to know any form of coding, meaning the average Dukandaar can be up and running with a chatbot in their Dukaan store in a matter of minutes. Want to learn how? We have written a detailed post about it here.
  • 24*7 availability: With a Kommunicate chatbot live, you can have your Dukaan ready to support your customers with their orders around the clock, all days of the week. This not only helps enhance your operations but helps your Dukaan stand out from the other establishments that shut shop at night.
  • Reduced costs, increased customer satisfaction: You may need to have an army of employees answering queries in your physical store during the peak hours, but a Kommunicate chatbot replaces them all with a single bot that can handle queries from a wide range of customers without ever getting tired of asking for a raise. Customers who get their queries answered promptly are also more likely to come back to your Dukaan.
  • Answer common questions: A bigger E-commerce store may have an army of customer support agents who would be answering FAQs, but as the owner of a small Dukaan, you can compete with them too using Kommunicate’s chatbot. The bot can be programmed to give responses to a list of questions that the customers generally ask, and is powered by advanced Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities, Kommunicate’s chatbots are as smart as they come.
  • Increased sales: With a Kommunicate chatbot running on your Dukaan store, you can rest assured that the customers are presented with the right set of products according to their shopping needs, meaning they know everything that your shop has to offer without the need to look around your Dukaan. This saves the customers precious time and considering the fact that chatbots have boosted sales by over 67%, according to this report, a Kommunicate bot can only do wonders for your Dukaan.
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Dukaan and Kommunicate – Making in India, for the World

Dukaan and Kommunicate - Making in India, for the World

The people, the technology, the ideas, and the passion for helping customers are the driving force behind both Dukaan and Kommunicate. Both the companies are based out of India and see great potential in this land of over a billion people.

So what are you waiting for? Take your small business online today with the Dukaan app, and if you want your customers to keep coming back for more, install Kommunicate


At Kommunicate, we are envisioning a world-beating customer support solution to empower the new era of customer support. We would love to have you onboard to have a first-hand experience of Kommunicate. You can signup here and start delighting your customers right away.

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Devashish Mamgain

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