The Magic Moment of Successful e-Commerce in Pakistan
November 27, 2018
Mr. Badar Khushnood, Cofounder and VP of Growth, Fishry.com and Bramerz.com, visited the Lahore School on 15th and 16th of November 2018 and gave a session “The Magic Moment of Successful e-Commerce in Pakistan” to the MBA cohort of 2018.
Badar explained that Web 1.0 referred to one-sided, informational presence of content on websites; Web 2.0 was interactional where you could comment, such as social media; while Web 3.0 was transactional, which could host payments.
Pakistan now adds USD 1 billion into global GDP yearly as a result of its “freelancing” in the digital area – such as software development, sales and manufacturing support, professional services, writing and translations, clerical and data entry, and creative and multimedia activities. Pakistan has 35 million users of smartphones. Pakistan’s 70% of population is under the age of 30. The current e-commerce gross sales of Pakistan will soon hit $ 1 billion but that is a total of only 0.35% of our GDP whereas this figure for China is 23%. This meant a lot of opportunity for e-commerce.
Badar also spoke about models of e-commerce: You had B2B marketplace (Ali Baba); B2B procurement (Khareed) where there was one buyer with multiple sellers; B2C Marketplace (Daraz), i.e. multiple buyers and multiple sellers; B2C multibrand marketplace (Shophive) and B2C own-branded stores (based on Fishry.com) – At Fishry we provided clients with Store Front, Payments, Logistics and P&S.
Badar also talked about the Eco-System in e-commerce. In any e-commerce company or business, the first thing to look for and stabilize is obviously technology. But this is useless if you do not have traffic? For this you need demand generation. But even if you have demand, but no inventory, you are in trouble. In Pakistan, the majority of e-commerce based businesses face this issue. If you have Inventory and do not have an effective payment system, then again you are in trouble. Importantly, all the elements in the value chain must perform to create a seamless user experience.
Badar urged students to use Google Trends which is a very simple and useful software that gives us a very extensive idea about universal trends. And most of this data is for free. By using Google Trends he highlighted that if a business wants to target a specific market they can literally check online free of cost through Google Trends who is their actual target market and which city has the most ongoing search about a specific brand.
Badar was asked why companies are still reluctant about Digital. He replied that first it was the mindset – we lived in our comfort zones. Secondly, the IT manager was not the right person to direct these projects. Some are worried that who will come to their brick and mortar stores.
As always, Badar Khushnood, one of Pakistan’s foremost experts in Digital Marketing, and also a Lahore School alumnus, is one of the most regular speakers on the MBA circuit and is a very valuable and honored guest at our campus.
Labels: Alumni, Guest Speaker
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 11/27/2018 11:01:00 AM,
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