India e-commerce enabler Gokwik raises $35m

Existing investors Matrix Partners India and Sequoia Capital India also participated.

The start-up, founded in 2020, received INR 400m (USD 5.5m）as a part of its pre-Series A round led by Matrix last year. RTP took contributed capital as well. Both investors re-upped in an INR 1.12bn (USD 15m) Series A later the same year led by Sequoia, AVCJ Research's records show.

Gokwik leverages big data and artificial intelligence to help merchants improve customer conversion rates and increase e-commerce gross merchandise value (GMV). A major pain point for India-based merchants and brands is high return rates. With cash on delivery (COD) still prevalent in the country, return rates have a direct impact on GMV.

Gokwik conducts return to origin (RTO) behavioural analysis with hundreds of parameters to understand the role played by factors such as change of interest, unavailability at the location at the time of delivery, and lockdown and distancing measures.

This information is used to create customized machine learning models to track and catch possible RTO orders. If an order is flagged as high risk, GoKwik immediately disables the COD option, which discourages frequent RTO customers and reveals the genuine desire to make a purchase.

For example, when Man Matters, a digital health platform that sells male-focused wellness products, blocked COD on 3% of high-risk orders, the overall RTO rate fell by 8.5%.

“The piece that we understand well is e-commerce and we take over the customer’s cart and take it to the final transaction. Over the next 9-12 months we will be focussing on retention and selection use cases for ecommerce and help partners increase their conversions,” said Chirag Taneja, co-founder and CEO of Gokwik, told The Economic Times.

At present, Gokwik services over 250 brands and has processed more than USD 1bn in GMV through its platform, reducing losses for merchants by INR 450m, according to its website.

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• Topics
• Early-stage
• South Asia
• Technology
• India
• e-commerce
• Sequoia Capital
• Matrix Partners
• RTP Global
• TMT