DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake

Ex-Dunzo employee. AMA.

Since I am Done-Zo with Dunzo, AMA anything. Here to spill all the scoop that’s happened.

18mo ago
App Promo
SnoozyWalrus
SnoozyWalrus

Majorly tech and product affected?

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

All across the board.

Engineering team was bloated and never understood why there was a need of around 300 engineers (SDE 1 to CTO level) in the first place.

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

On top of it, the code base is such a mess, and the speed of shipping changes is really slow. They just like to create services and name it after a beverage, add more micro services and repeat. As a result, shipping any change would take 3-4 weeks. Major releases would often take months, which would easily be done in 2 sprints otherwise.

FuzzyPickle
FuzzyPickle

How has the situation mentally affected the employees there?

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

Morale is really low. Many employees have EMIs and Bills to pay and are desperately looking for jobs in this cold market.

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

Plus, the employees have lost faith in the leadership, which wasn’t the case last year. In most town halls, the leadership team is diplomatic when it came to answering tough questions.

SleepyBanana
SleepyBanana

I heard there was 1-2 secondaries during the 200mil round. Did folks benefit decently including founders?

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

I don’t know about the benefits tbh as I joined during the hiring frenzy of last year after they raised the round from Reliance.

But I did see lack of financial discipline - such as paying for hotels and flight tickets of employees to work from office for few weeks in May when the company was focusing on scaling ops during IPL, and also paying for multiple parties (anywhere from 100-500 people) every other Thursday or Friday at that time, and that too at places like Gawky Goose (which isn’t the cheapest tbh), paying for a standup gig by Rahul Subramanian, and much more which I am probably not even aware of.

SleepyBanana
SleepyBanana

Suka suka! I guess if someone dives deep into financial activities, boxes of skeletons may emerge. Sad

GigglyLlama
GigglyLlama

I like the LinkedIn posts from Dunzo's head of product. Generally insightful. What would your take be on how she steered the product org?

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

All I can say is we miss Anirban’s leadership more than anything.

GigglyLlama
GigglyLlama

I guess it's time for a shakeup at the top.

DizzyNarwhal
DizzyNarwhal
TCS18mo

Is there any way Dunzo can get out if this mess ? And make it.

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

From what I am hearing, only thing that can probably make this company survive is if they focus on growing the B2B business, their ONDC coverage and they stop spending any other penny extra on the B2C side of things. Otherwise, there might be a fire sale of the company.

DizzyNarwhal
DizzyNarwhal
TCS18mo

Not related to the topic but how does these things affect your mental health. It’s like working on building a ship and watching it sink

FloatingMuffin
FloatingMuffin

How exactly does this Form 16 fiasco work? I understand that basically Dunzo has withheld taxes from the employees, but just not paid the income tax. And apparently Dunzo put out instructions to employees on how to file ITR without Form 16. But do they not realise that the employees have to pay that tax AGAIN?

I just don't understand how a company could be so truly terrible and awful to their entire workforce. It takes a special type of sociopath to be in Dunzo's management team right now.

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

TDS has been deducted, but it has been not deposited for all months. Now IDK why is that the case.

SquishyBoba
SquishyBoba

Not paying income taxes withheld from an employee would be a Statutory Non Compliance. Don't think so that would have happened. But you never know...

CosmicDumpling
CosmicDumpling
InMobi18mo

When do you think it started to go really wrong for Dunzo?

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

I think when they started focusing on the Q-Commerce businesses, and started spending aggressively on marketing, expansion and hiring. Other BUs ( PnD, Marketplace model, Dunzo 4 Business) were either profitable or nearing break even, but they didn’t give 2 fucks about allocating resources for those BUs.

I felt things got to a point of no return when the Q comm business stagnated around Sept-Oct’22, while the B2B business was growing steadily with break even cost. Yet, most of the employees and marketing budget was allocated for Dunzo Daily, which IMO was the point of no return.

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

There were still brands and businesses approaching us who wanted to enlist their products and store on the hyperlocal marketplace flow. But the Leadership team decided to turn a blind eye to those who weren’t willing to stock their products in the Q Commerce offering (aka Mini Warehouses which Dunzo employees refer to instead off dark stores).

BouncyDonut
BouncyDonut

How was the work life balance and behavior or CXO towards the employees?

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

WLB depended on the team and BU you worked on. I personally liked the WLB, and met some of the nicest and smartest colleagues.

The CXOs didn’t misbehave or treat employees badly, like the way Deepinder(Zomato) or Ashneer hurl abuses.

However, they had their heads up their asses and conveniently choose to ignore the fact that the Q- commerce business won’t cut it in making Dunzo profitable. As a result, they had to resort to layoffs since this year and other financial gymnastics to keep the business afloat.

QuirkyBanana
QuirkyBanana
Dunzo18mo

I think I might add to the behaviour of CXOs towards the employees. Maybe the OP didn't face this but in WBR's the founders would hurl every abuse known to mankind. I mean the team weren't the most brightest when it came to doing things so I guess they sorta deserved it but many other people used to get caught in the cross fire too.

PrancingNoodle
PrancingNoodle
Zomato18mo

Can be wrong but isn’t it possible to build and keep running dunzo with 20 odd engineers

PrancingSushi
PrancingSushi

Dont think so, you have to build this type of culture from the start with proper stabilization, trade offs etc. to achieve this Eg, whatsapp didnt have 1000 --> 10 engineers, it had 10-20 from the start same with zerodha etc. There might be some exceptions, but this never works.

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

With the current state of code base, I doubt it. Atleast 100 would be needed, and that too they will have to slog it out

WigglyBanana
WigglyBanana

Hey @Product
Really insightful AMA Wanted to know: did revenue for consumer pick and drop go down very significantly after quick commerce?

Also, why do you think Dunzo never cracked QComm despite having an already established fleet? Was it the lack of dark stores and business understanding?

This will be very helpful for a startup idea I am toying with

DizzyPancake
DizzyPancake
PayU18mo

So the consumer pick and drop (the courier service) was on autopilot ever since the Q Commerce pivot and no one reviewed those metrics last year . I don’t know for sure if it went down or up.

Dunzo’s assortment of products was lower compared to other Q commerce competitors, which is one of the reason why Dunzo didn’t do well.

WigglyBanana
WigglyBanana

This makes sense Very helpful.

Appreciate you 🙌

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