The Engineers Duo From IIIT Hyderabad Launched , Bikayi App Which Allows Small Businesses To create Their Online Stores

Startups have always been a specimen of inspiration no matter which field it is associated with. Here, is the new story behind a startup Bikayi, which allows small businesses to quickly and simply created online stores, powered with all necessary tools needed to manage e-commerce on WhatsApp messenger.

It was started with a duo of Raipur-girl Sonakshi Nathani and Karnal-boy Ashutosh Singla who met as classmates at IIIT (International Institute of Information Technology), Hyderabad, in 2011. Working on various projects together, right from their first year of college, the two computer science engineers made a good team and became friends very fast. 

After college, Sonakshi went on to work for Microsoft in Hyderabad as a software engineer for 3 years. Where, Ashutosh moved to Canada and had a stint with US-headquartered HR startup Zenefits and Twitter Co-founder Jack Dorsey’s payments startup Square.

While they were both happy with their jobs and the perks that came with them, somewhere there was a sense of unfulfillment. The duo found their jobs “very easy” and didn’t feel “challenged enough”. Speaking of that phase, Sonakshi reminisces “We used to always wonder what next?” The duo knew they wanted to set up their own tech company and had a few startup ideas.

With a bold move, both quit their jobs by October 2018, because they felt that if they continued with the day jobs, the idea of starting up would probably never come to fruition. Around 2018-end, Sonakshi was back in her hometown of Raipur — where her family has its real estate business of building residential colonies and also runs a grocery store — when the ‘Eureka’ moment happened. 

That grocery store is integral to this story because that is where the seeds of Sonakshi (26) and Ashutosh’s (25) startup Bikayi — which has managed to turn profitable and raise $2 million in funding, all in about a year’s time — were sown.

Unlike Sonakshi, Ashutosh does not come from a business family. His mother was a teacher, while his father worked in the state irrigation department in Haryana.

“These people (the store staff) started taking orders on WhatsApp. Regular customers were messaging the items they wanted, on chat. But a lot of time was going into figuring out the order and in checking the inventory,” Sonakshi said.

She told Ashutosh about the problem. They started looking for solutions and found Shopify. The Canadian e-commerce company helps entrepreneurs create, scale, and manage their own online stores. 

On April 1, 2019, the duo officially launched their startup, Bikayi, which allows small businesses to quickly and simply create their online stores, powered with all the necessary tools needed to manage e-commerce on WhatsApp.Anyone doing commerce on WhatsApp is the primary customer, whether it's a grocery store, wholesaler, manufacturer, retailer, restaurant, or bakery.

The Bikayi app has both free and premium subscription-based offerings that start from Rs 1,999 and go up to Rs 7,999 per year. The subscriptions include benefits such as the ability to generate discount promo codes, different themes, analytics access, etc.

The startup was initially bootstrapped with the co-founder's personal savings of around Rs 7 lakh. Till July 2020, the company was being run by a team of four — the two co-founders, a young customer care executive, and a fresh engineer from IIT Kharagpur. Last month, it announced its seed funding round of $2 million from a group of international investors, including Grammy award-winning American electronic DJ and music producer duo Chainsmokers’ early-stage fund Mantis Ventures, Y Combinator, and Pioneer Fund.

 "The pandemic has accelerated growth in terms of mom-and-pop stores adopting the platform. From 25,000 merchants on its platform in July, as of September, it has 85,000. According to the 26-year-old entrepreneur," Sonakshi said 

The Bikayi app which is available for download on the Google Play Store has been witnessing 60% organic downloads.

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