The world has changed drastically in the aftermath of coronavirus onslaught that has brought several unforeseeable challenges to grapple with. One of these unforeseeable challenges happens to be contactless retail shopping, which is immensely critical for keeping us 100% safe in the post-pandemic era.
Just as the world was trying to find ways to encourage contactless retail shopping, a Gurugram based contactless retail startup came with its own solution for helping the world to give a good head-start in this critical quest.
Known as Gobbly and founded by Ankur Agrawal and Amit Ahuja, this barely one-year-old startup came with a mobile operated fridge for offering a seamless contactless retail shopping. Stocked with fresh groceries, users can buy these grocery items by scanning the QR code on the Gobbly app and the amount gets automatically dedicated from their wallet. Gobbly claims that its QR code induced payment method helps in keeping its customers safe and can act as a potential shield against all types of viruses.
Gobbly further claims that its mobile-enabled contactless fridge is safe and hygienic, provides zero contact service, is available 24/7 within socities.
With an ambition to make its product a huge success at mass scale, barely two months back Gobbly raised $500,000 in a seed funding round from Sauce.vc. The company had said that it will use this fund to increase the penetration of its contactless stores, aiming to install its 40-50 contactless refrigerators across Delhi-NCR region by 2020. It now seems that the company is surely progressing well in achieving this ambitious goal.
“Gobbly is currently present in 17 locations – 8 in corporate, 7 in colleges and 2 in residential. Machines in corporate and collages are not functional as of now and hopefully we shall start again by Mid-October. For residentials – We will be launching in about 12-13 societies in the coming month and will be looking at a similar no. every month till Dec,” Agrawal and Ahuja said.
Gobbly’s problems with regards to making its contactless machines functional in colleges is evidently because most educational institutions across India are still closed due to the coronavirus problem.
Both co-founders added Covid-19 “has made ‘contactless’ an important new part of the everyday retailing jargon. Essentials shopping has changed as we know it. Consumers no longer stroll into stores and take their time interacting with products and people. People are now looking for contactless options to get their daily groceries and essentials thus making it convenient to get the daily groceries.”
When enquired about when Gobbly plans to raise its next funding round, both co-founders refused to disclose any information on this matter. But like all ambitious startups, this Gurugram startup would surely want to make its supposedly unique offering into a pan India brand and for this it may very well have to keep raising funds.