Daraz changing the digital landscape in Pakistan

Pakistan is rapidly transforming into an e-commerce-driven nation. It was quite evident how the country’s e-commerce industry remained resilient through the grinding year of 2020. But Pakistan is now preparing for a turnaround as the world increasingly transitions toward online commerce, a trend that has been sparked in particular by COVID-19. With massive e-commerce platforms like Daraz setting up in such a way that boosts business efficiency, how significant is the change in the digital landscape in Pakistan through this platform specifically? Let’s find out.

About Daraz itself:
In 2012, Daraz was established, and its imitation of Amazon’s online purchasing model launched Pakistan’s e-Commerce industry into a new era. It is South Asia’s virtual marketplace that provides more than 20 million products within different categories to be sold or ordered. It enables and empowers thousands of sellers to connect with customers through the platform providing ease in the business world.
Soon after Daraz’s launch, Alibaba, a massive company in China, purchased the entire Daraz Group from Rocket Internet in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. This turned Pakistan into the group’s largest market with over five million clients. This purchase and revolution surely proved to increase the competition making the businesses having a brick-and-mortar presence miss out on the growth channel. In addition, having just one platform or a website is insufficient in today’s world for bringing change.
Here’s how Daraz is changing the digital landscape in Pakistan:

What sets Daraz apart from others?

Along with being a great e-commerce marketplace providing opportunities to individuals as well as companies to sell their products and to customers for purchasing everything from one place, Daraz also owns warehouses and courier services. This addition to the platform has helped attract more sellers as no other company is providing warehousing facilities, access to a larger customer base, and shipping facilities all in one place. Their exceptional business model helps in acknowledging issues and overcoming them. Instead of handing over the service and quality check to the sellers, Daraz receives and manages orders through a seller center maintaining the performance and quality. This drives more and more sellers as well as customers towards their platform.

Daraz Pushing the Boundaries of Innovation:

Daraz, a leading e-commerce platform, noticed an extraordinary increase in the number of their platform users. Before this exceptional growth, throughout all the previous years, they had pushed the boundaries of innovation in order to find clarification and work on development and growth. It was reported that the two highly critical factors that affect the commercial development of an e-commerce landscape in Pakistan are the country’s literacy rate and financial inclusion.
Daraz has been working on these factors and has been successful in pushing its way forward through the launch of Daraz University which solely concentrated on teaching operations for a rising seller base. Along with this, Daraz Wallet was launched in order to cover the aspect of financial inclusion. This step encouraged catching up with the technological advancements by making a shift towards digital payments.
In addition, Daraz has empowered sellers to reach a greater customer base across the world by launching DExports and Daraz Express. These initiatives ensured substantial growth and have helped in changing the digital landscape, especially in Pakistan.

Daraz and the Digital Landscape of Pakistan:
Pakistan being a developing country is still on the lines of catching up with the technological advancements taking place across the globe. We notice that the world had switched to digital functioning a few decades ago when Pakistan was still lacking behind. However, with the launch of Daraz and its drive toward innovation, there have been exceptional advancements in the e-commerce landscape. The country is rapidly transitioning toward digital functioning like online shopping, tracking orders with just one click, shipping facilities, and getting things at your doorstep in a matter of a day or two, as well as plenty of exports and imports have switched to digitalization now.

However, it is a collective challenge that, if solved, may boost the performance of all companies in the country. The Daraz platform is in a unique position to transform Pakistan’s environment, open doors for its citizens, and lead toward the digital era.