Investing in Ping

The top 10 cities in India, by our estimates, have ~25K apartment complexes, housing ~15-18 Mn people. If you live in a gated apartment society, you would agree that society WhatsApp groups form an important part of the social fabric. Apart from general updates, there are groups for moms, dads, groceries, social work, etc. Right from charity to commerce, these groups act as great avenues of discovery and referrals of merchants and vendors. The volume of unstructured commerce and lead generation in these groups has always intrigued us. Pandemic and lockdowns have only strengthened this behavior. Often this commerce is driven by an enthusiastic group member, who discovers a new vendor and wants to share with the broader community.

Every city has many such high quality, consumer obsessed merchants, who want to create their independent brand identity but are usually limited by access to customers. While these makers are very skilled in their crafts and are ambitious and aware, they are not very proficient in generating and scaling demand. Many go through business-to-consumer (B2C) channels and generate demand through Instagram and Facebook, but are unable to do it efficiently. As a result, despite the lower realization, makers end up selling to business-to-business (B2B) channels like hotels and high-end restaurants. On large marketplaces, such makers are crowded out to later pages and are unable to communicate their brand stories. Such makers want a channel which allows them to build their brand identity and control their consumer experience. No channel today allows them to do so efficiently.

Interestingly, consumers are also often on the lookout for such high quality, trusted makers (particularly in categories like fresh fruits and vegetables, beauty, pet food, home and garden and food experiences). With no platform focusing on these, the avenues are limited and discovery is left to chance (social media channels or friend networks). Even after discovery, there is significant friction in accessing these vendors as they often need demand aggregation. Tracking and fulfilment often falls upon the consumer who referred the maker in the first place—making it highly onerous for them as well. Key pain points include the tedious task of maintaining multiple WhatsApp groups, the unreliability of vendors, inefficient payment channels and disorganized delivery services.