Meet The Local Business Experts Who Made it to Entrepreneur India's 35U35 List Wanting to aggregate content on local businesses and attractions in some of India's busiest cities, Suchita Salwan and Dhruv Mathur conceptualized an online community under the name of Little Black Book.
By Punita Sabharwal •
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Blenders Pride Reserve Collection presents Entrepreneur's 35U35 list included some path-breaking names from the field of entrepreneurship and the brains behind locally-sourced content platform Little Black Book, Suchita Salwan and Dhruv Mathur.
In 2013, Suchita Salwan was working with the BBC when she started Little Black Book (LBB) to solve a personal need. In her words, "I've been born and brought up in Delhi, but despite all the listing platforms that existed, I found it impossible to discover new and unique local businesses. A lot of the information given on listing platforms was disaggregated, and presented in boring, mundane ways." The initial goal of LBB was to give everyone a chance to showcase as well as discover all the great things their city had to offer. Everyone has their own version of making their city awesome, everyone has a collection of recommendation. Her idea was to create a way for people to share their favorite places, products and experiences, enabling others to find and discover things they haven't heard of. In 2015, Suchita was joined by her co-founder, Dhruv Mathur (Carnegie Mellon, ex-Deloitte, & co-founder of GetFBPay).
LBB is really reinventing how content, recommendations and information can drive meaningful connects between users and businesses. Unlike traditional listing platforms, LBB's made discovering local businesses fun. The startup has grown organically across 8 cities on the back of consumer love (not marketing). LBB is an open platform where everyone can keep a record and post about a business they recommend.Over 90 percent of the businesses recommended on LBB are SMBs.
They recently launched a shop section on LBB, where users can buy products from local businesses. Currently, LBB sees over 3 million monthly active users across its web and app. Over 60,000 businesses have been recommended on LBB. Over 1,000 businesses have used its platform to build and grow their businesses- from large companies like Fabindia, ABInBev, Pepperfry, to upcoming SMBs across shopping, food & events. The startup has raised a total of Rs15 crore till date from stalwart VCs like Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG), Blume Ventures, IAN and Rajan Anandan.
(This article appears in the February 2019 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here. You can buy our tablet version from Magzter.com. To visit our Archives, click here.)
