Bizzo, a Covid-born tech start-up launched to empower digitisation of small and independent service businesses, has received the financial backing of USD 2 million from a strong investor community led by ICICI Bank and Orios Venture Partners. With this fresh funding infusion, Bizzo will accelerate its plan to help service-preneurs to digitally build, scale and organise their businesses.
Bizzo’s funding announcement is in tandem with several other developments in the market that continue to create a more conducive environment for tech-led innovation in open digital commerce. Chief among these is the Government of India’s Open Network of Digital Commerce (ONDC) initiative. An open architecture-based UPI-like platform for trade in goods & services, major financial institutions such as ICICI Bank, SBI & CSC have already announced significant investments in ONDC. Bizzo’s vision is, thus, aligned with the overall market direction as it aims to develop a universal seller-side app to facilitate the digitisation of services.
Over the past decade, small and independent service businesses have lost out on their own branding and pricing power, and have witnessed erosion of profit margins due to hefty commissions charged by aggregators. Also, the Indian services sector is largely unorganised with over 100M small & independent service businesses in dire need of full-stack solutions to directly connect with their customers. Bizzo aims to address these pain points by handing back the power to these service-preneurs so that they regain connect with their customer base and control all aspects of their business.
Commenting on the fundraising, Viineit Toshniiwal, CEO and Co-Founder at Bizzo said, “We are delighted to have ICICI Bank and Orios on board as investors in Bizzo’s vision to digitally empower India’s vast SMB ecosystem. For too long now, India’s small businesses were pushed towards aggregation. However, the trend now is to move towards de-aggregation and reduced dependence on centralised monolith platforms with closed systems. The next decade is going to be all about unbundling and using open architecture-based systems that brings autonomy to small and independent businesses.”
“India’s service businesses don’t need middlemen, they need a medium, thus, Bizzo’s ultimate goal is to become the go-to solution provider for SMB businesses looking to join the digital mainstream and enjoy the perks of digitisation. This funding is the first step towards achieving our dream,” added Toshniiwal.
Anup Jain, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners also spoke about the funding into Bizzo’s app and said, “At Orios, we always back tenacious and visionary founders, especially those who are determined to become change-makers. Bizzo’s plan to empower the SMB services ecosystem is in line with our overall thesis of backing ideas that use technology to disrupt traditional ecosystems, thus, benefitting all stakeholders. We are excited to partner with Bizzo in this mission.”
