Daraz leads in e-commerce by prioritising customers’ and sellers’ needs

Innovations include a premium shopping channel and a stimulus programme.    

As e-commerce grows exponentially in South Asia, companies in the retail sector must know how to attract customers and earn their trust, particularly with regard to online transactions. Another important aspect of e-commerce is ensuring that online sellers are protected from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Daraz, a leading online-shopping platform in South Asia, has shown excellence not only in improving service quality for the benefit of customers but also in corporate social responsibility for the benefit of dealers who rely on the platform. For this, it has earned the E-mall of the Year and CSR Initiative of the Year trophies at the Retail Asia Awards 2021, which honours the innovations and accomplishments of enterprises in the past 24 months.       

The E-mall of the Year Award is given to DarazMall, which has focused on developing a premium and secure channel for high-quality products and services. Since it was launched in 2019, DarazMall has contributed to the acceleration of online business across Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal. In 2020, DarazMall gave customers a wide range of options by hosting more than 2,500 brands with over 1 million assorted products supplied by manufacturers or authorised distributors. Moreover, through the Flagship Store concept, the channel enables dealers to build a strong relationship with customers and ensures constant availability of products.

During the strict COVID-19 lockdown, the company used its own logistics service, Daraz Express (DEX), to deliver customers’ urgent orders in the safest possible way. From March to May, DEX delivered almost 700,000 packages containing health and hygiene products, grocery items, apparel, electronics, and many others.

Amongst the company’s achievements are the following: (1) growing to a multi-hundred-million-dollar business during a challenging year; (2) connecting more than 2,500 brands directly to South Asian consumers in one virtual mall; and (3) supporting the development of the region’s e-commerce industry through focus on trust and service.

The CSR Initiative of the Year Award acknowledges the Seller Stimulus Programme, which offered pandemic-related relief to the 150,000+ sellers dependent on Daraz and traditional offline (brick-and-mortar) business that would otherwise have been severely affected by the economic fallout from COVID-19. This stimulus programme involved waiving seller commission fees to facilitate the operations of current sellers. Traditional sellers were also brought onboard so that they could start selling online and ensure the continuity of their business. Daraz implemented this programme by working with the government on standard operating procedures and logistic matters. The stimulus programme provided not only financial aid but also ease of doing business, which gave existing and new sellers an opportunity to earn revenue when they needed it most. Through support chats and emails, Daraz received thousands of queries and requests for new sellers to set up shop on its platform.

The major achievements from this stimulus programme are (1) supporting businesses with a commission waiver of up to $500,000; (2) providing a space for 60,000+ new SMEs on Daraz during the peak pandemic months in 2020; and (3) enabling local marketplace sellers to receive 1.9+ million orders in May 2020.

Inspired by these recent accomplishments, Daraz aims to consistently serve a large community by selling and delivering all the products needed by customers.    

Watch the interview below to know more about their winning project: