If “hyperlocal delivery” has become something of a magic word, and most start-ups in the space have been trying to bring the small retailer into the chain to provide end-user convenience, ‘chat’ as a medium has been somewhat underrated. Until Deepak Ravindran’s LookUp decided it was the way to disrupt local commerce. LookUp assimilates all the requirements ranging from buying groceries, ordering home delivery, and making reservations to product or price enquiry into one app. But LookUp sees itself as an offline JustDial or Google so that the consumer can look up products in the near vicinity and get them delivered on-demand.

Offline search Chat platforms in hyperlocal delivery are bringing about ‘conversational commerce’. Since kicking off business at the tail end of 2014, LookUp claims over a million users and having processed 22 million chats. In just over a year, 85,000 merchants have registered with LookUp.

Live now in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and New Delhi, LookUp wants to make this a year of “more machines, less humans”.

“We’ve just launched LookUp Version 2.0, payment gateways have been enabled for efficiency, and we also have LookUp Cash. Our new app is light-weight, and features like ‘Track Your Order’ will let users know the time the delivery will reach them,” says Ravindran.

He explains that over 80 per cent of the sessions are handled by customer support or the store, while only 20 per cent are automated.

He would like the ratio to be 60-40; at least 40 per cent of the sessions automated, and gradually scaling it to 100 per cent.

LookUp also brought new CTO Narayan Babu on board with the objective to enhance user experience. Babu says, “I see chat as one of the biggest drivers of business growth and LookUp is tapping its potential with great agility… nothing interests me more than building mobile-first consumer products that touch millions of users.”

Tweaking for potential One year in business is a long time in a fast-paced world. Scaling up responsibly and being able to serve larger numbers of consumers with efficiency is the name of the game.

LookUp has now introduced a Premium Merchants category – merchants pay ₹1,000 while registering and they get more leads from LookUp. But the deal is really a motivation for merchants to try and serve consumers faster.

“The consumer isn’t concerned about where the product comes from, he wants it in time. In Dec 2015, we signed on 160 premium merchants and in January alone we had added 600 premium merchants.

“By integrating our LookUp POS terminal with these merchants, we know exactly which store has what product, hence making it easier to fulfil customer requests without the need of human intervention.”

comment COMMENT NOW