Dukaan wants to be a real SaaS company

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Editor's note: The two years of the pandemic were the heyday for “kirana tech” startups in India. With a pitch to bring tiny neighbourhood businesses online, the sector boomed in 2020 and Bengaluru-based Dukaan shot to the limelight with a swift entry and even swifter expansion.  Dukaan made a lot of noise when it started. Within two months of its launch, it had onboarded more than 2.7 million small business owners who were using its platform to sell their products online. It raised seed money from two big names in venture capital—Lightspeed Venture Partners and Matrix Partners. The company also saw quite a few rivals following suit and was involved in a widely discussed intellectual property dispute with Khatabook, another startup selling software to small stores. For a few months, multiple Indian startups raced to build what was hailed as a Shopify for kirana stores and small businesses in India. But as the pandemic waned, the high quickly wore off and investors and companies alike came to the realization that growth had slowed and there was no revenue in sight.  Earlier this …