Managing Director of Esho.com, DIDARUL ALAM SUNNY shares his business idea and potential of e-commerce in Bangladesh.
Q: Tell us about your childhood.
Didarul Alam Sunny (DAS): I was born and brought up in Kishoregonj. I completed my SSC and HSC over there. As my father used to work there at that time, we couldn’t move to Dhaka. Our whole establishment and business were over there.
My father founded Gemini Textile over there. It was one of the prominent textile brands for check towels. Back then, my father was a parliamentary member.
After completing my HSC, I moved to Dhaka and completed my BBA in Marketing from AIUB. After that, I joined the operational team in Warid Telecom at that time.
I then switched my job to ACI and Swapno. Working with Swapno gave me a lot of experiences and inspirations. This whole project gave me the confidence to create something big in our country; the motivation gave me the power to grow as an entrepreneur. From there, I had the urge to create something through which I could connect with the people.
With good people, good money, and good networks, I started my career at Icon Management as a manager. It was one of the highest six posts in the company. There I had to start from very scratch as it wasn’t launched in the market yet. The best thing about working in the planning stage is that you can learn a lot of new things; you can learn to analyze and give input. And then, when the product is launched, your input will either return to you as success or failure. Both of them are positive as you can learn from your mistakes, feel more confident, and learn to design successful models, which you can show to people.
While working at Icon, I made a lot of connections throughout the country. Most of them were high profiled people. Because we targeted customers who spent 5000 to 6000 taka on their mobile monthly. Their estimated monthly income was around 1,50,000 taka and they are capable of spending. As per our research, there are 30,00,000 to 35,00,000 such people in this earning-class market. We started working with the people who had influence on the economy. Through this, we made a good network with the big houses and corporations throughout the country.
Q: What motivated you to start your own business?
DAS: After working with different companies, I decided to modify my retail experience into online retail and started “Esho.com”.
I selected this Bangla name ‘Esho’ being inspired by Swapno, which showed me a dream to start something new by myself. Besides, the network had given me the boost to go forward with e-commerce. This is a profitable thing as there are about 4.5 crore people having an Internet connection in our country.
I targeted this huge market, which is capable of spending 400 to 500 taka on the Internet. They have a disposable income on average of 40,000 to 50,000. So they were our customers because they had the knowledge of the Internet and the money to spend. There are a lot of opportunities in the market because currently, the market is operating on only from 6 to 7 million.
Most of the e-commerce sites are based on social media sites like Facebook. If you sort facebook users aging from 20 to 65 years of age group, there are 70 to 75 lakhs audiences. We are targeting them and we are having a good amount of sales. From 70 lakhs, we target around 10 to 15 lakhs of people, having an Internet connection and smartphones. Out of this, I can make sales of 1.5 lakhs daily.
You see, from 4.5 crores to 10 lakhs — what is the market percentage I am serving? Just 4%. Now by targeting this percentage, if I can sell 1.5 lakhs, by targeting 30%, how much I can sell every day? 45 lakhs. So, the market is pretty huge.
These things hit my mind and I decided to start something.
Q: What is the story behind choosing the name “Esho”?
DAS: I gave much thought to the name. I chose the name ‘Esho’ because it welcomes you to join us. I started the business, and we are doing very well now.
We look forward to connecting all the small businesses around the country and give them a platform to reach the end consumers. For example, a guy from a village is selling something currently. But he has no connection with the end consumer in Dhaka city. He has to go through a lot of steps through the value chain. In the near future, ‘esho.com’ also plans to give them a solid platform to facilitate their profit and productivity in business.
They can display their product on our site, they would be able to maintain it from the village and people can buy from here. But the main problem with it is that, you need to make scalability for this. If a certain amount of order for his product is not ensured, he can’t transport the product in Dhaka for the value chain cost. We are working on it and trying to develop a model to solve this problem.
Currently, to sustain and raise ‘Esho’ to a certain position, we are initially playing with the necessary products like lifestyle products, electronics, etc, so that we can get 6% to 7% customers among the 4.5 crores. So that when we extend our operation, I can connect the villagers with the Dhaka consumers and even the handicrafts makers to the foreign customers. So this is ‘esho.com’– where people will come with their daily needs, and we will meet them with our solid execution team. We will offer them a better quality service at a better price, which would help the bottom economy as well.
Q: What is the story behind choosing the name “Esho”?
DAS: I gave much thought to the name. I chose the name ‘Esho’ because it welcomes you to join us. I started the business, and we are doing very well now.
We look forward to connecting all the small businesses around the country and give them a platform to reach the end consumers. For example, a guy from a village is selling something currently. But he has no connection with the end consumer in Dhaka city. He has to go through a lot of steps through the value chain. In the near future, ‘esho.com’ also plans to give them a solid platform to facilitate their profit and productivity in business.
They can display their product on our site, they would be able to maintain it from the village and people can buy from here. But the main problem with it is that, you need to make scalability for this. If a certain amount of order for his product is not ensured, he can’t transport the product in Dhaka for the value chain cost. We are working on it and trying to develop a model to solve this problem.
Currently, to sustain and raise ‘Esho’ to a certain position, we are initially playing with the necessary products like lifestyle products, electronics, etc, so that we can get 6% to 7% customers among the 4.5 crores. So that when we extend our operation, I can connect the villagers with the Dhaka consumers and even the handicrafts makers to the foreign customers. So this is ‘esho.com’– where people will come with their daily needs, and we will meet them with our solid execution team. We will offer them a better quality service at a better price, which would help the bottom economy as well.
Q: What are the challenges you faced to start this business?
DAS: In any startup business, fund is always the main problem.
And also, the people around Bangladesh are not so much educated in using the Internet as yet. For example, when you start advertising, the people start coming to the site. But they don’t understand how to buy. This is the primary thing which you have to educate the people. Otherwise, they will only come, see and go. It will be just a visit and there will be no transaction. And when there will be no transaction, there will be no profit. This is the biggest problem we faced in the beginning. We have made a remedy to this problem by making a promo video to help the customers.
On top of this problem, there are not many merchant who are well aware of the Internet transaction and everything. For example, some people would display their products in your site for customers. Now, if a certain customer buys 10 pieces out of his stock, they will give it but won’t update it into the system. So now what may happen is that, some people would want to buy his product which is already sold out. This error will make them feel deprived, but it’s just an error!
During this era of social media awareness, things are very sensitive. If a single customer faces any problem in transaction, there would be a bad review and the people may not buy from us.
We have faced this problem and the remedy was using our own inventory system initially, till the user base got educated. We have our own photographers. They get the photos and edit them before uploading so that the consumer gets the actual picture of the products. So there’s no confusion like they buy a certain product and it doesn’t match with the picture. Basically, we are correcting ourselves; after which we shall move on to the development of the merchants.
As for funding, I am trying to bring some foreign investments. It will help us go to the next level. The market is very competitive and there’s no other option but to keep moving to the next levels with the help of the funds.
Q: Some people say, no matter how rich and educated, Bangladeshi people still feel more comfortable by going to the conventional market, seeing the product themselves, bargaining with the shopkeepers and then buying products. Is this statement true? Is your business facing any such barrier?
DAS: The statement is true to some extent. The people in our country feel more comfortable in going to the physical-markets by themselves, and get the touch and feeling of the products. In the international market 60% is the retailer and 40% is the online markets. In our country, there is only 3% to 4% online market with a scope of 37% growth. So, this barrier could gradually be transferred into opportunity.
When people go to the conventional markets, they see a product which is also available online. But, if the price is 20% to 30% less, people will then come online. They will find a good price to shop online. This is what happening in most of the cases in the online markets. A recent research in India shows that the people over there are going to the retail market just for the trial and after that they buy it from online. Hopefully, this is also going to happen in Bangladesh.
So it’s not a barrier, rather an opportunity. We will grow to the 40-45% marketing literally because it is a country of uncertainty all the time strike and everything, the people may not have any other option without ordering through online.
Whenever there is no strike then you find a lot of traffic on the road and people are not willing to go to the Bashundara spending 4-5 hours sitting in jam. So people will eventually like to come to ‘esho.com’ because by nature Bangladeshis are very comfort seeking people. As the provided things are from good brands so they will get the confidence and trust on the platform. That’s why we are trying to bring in the trust and the reliability factor within ‘esho.com’ by providing good products, right products in the right price which is lower by 20% or 30% compared to that available at conventional markets. The market would then naturally grow to 40% if we can maintain the pace with the finance and everything.
Patience and professionalism are very important. In e-commerce without being patient you can’t get the taste of the market because it won’t give you the immediate result. But, its future is very bright; it is something which will create a significant impact on the economy, GDP rate and the lifestyle of the people in here. That’s how we want to bring about changes, and that’s why we welcome people to ‘esho.com’.
Q: We hear from so many people that the Internet connection in our country is not that good. For this sort of businesses to grow, it’s very important that there exists a very good Internet service. Does this create any problem in your business?
DAS: This is surely a problem. We are facing this. Due to the slow Internet connectivity, web pages take a huge time to load. But our people are not going to spend time to see the loading page. This could be a barrier. But, I believe, over time it will go away, because, there is huge competition in the market. Now the Internet speed and the cost is a concern. The government is stepping in also. They are taking steps to establish a faster Internet connection throughout the country. They have taken the initiative to raise the average speed to 1 Mbps. If it happens, we can reach a lot of people. We may even find 50 to 60 lakhs customers.
Q: What are the special qualities that differentiate ‘esho.com’ from other retail-stores?
DAS: Our name offers a good insight into our qualities. We have our own warehouse and production. We even have our own brand named ‘Esho style’. It has its own post-production team, own designers, and everything is managed within the business. They are not dependent on external parties so much right at this moment, because they want to give a better experience to the customers.
One thing I don’t want to mention but have to is that many e-commerce businesses are promoting their vendors, which is very dangerous. Because the merchants are not ready yet. When you start promoting a vendor who does not have a good experience and cannot deliver quality products, it reflects a bad impression to the market. The customers will move away from e-commerce which will put a bad impact on the good players as well. This is really a threat to us, which we are trying to overcome.
Q: Please give us a short synopsis on how our readers will order from your market and how their products would be delivered.
DAS: If someone feels to give us a try, they can visit ‘esho.com’ through the Internet. They can easily find their desired product from the categories. Product description and picture of the product are given. They can also select from the available sizes, colors, etc. After selecting, he has to click on the “Buy Now” button.
We tried our best to keep online shopping plain and simple. After all the selections have been made, he can check his cart for the billing. If everything goes ok, then he has to click “Buy Now” again. A pop-up will appear in front of him where he has to put all the information like the name, shipping address, mobile number, etc.
After that, when he clicks the “Place Order” button, he will receive a copy of the bill. We will also receive a notification on the back end. We call the customer to ensure his order. After getting confirmation, we deliver the product. 90% of the customer goes for the cash on delivery because they want to experience the “look and feel”.
After receiving the product, the customer tries it on. If it fits, he keeps it; if not, he returns it. There are no charges for the return of the product. The delivery is also free if you purchase above 500 takas.
Q: Is there any existing offer from ‘esho.com’?
DAS: Yes, there is. We have our own inventory. Our products are stored there. Now, if it is stored there for more than 6 months, there’s automatically a 50% discount. You will get it in the offer zone.
If the customer buys through bKash or credit cards, he will get a 10% discount.
We also provide different promo-code on various occasions. The customer can apply the promo code in the checkout section. The promo code will get them discounts.
You will see that, we are not much involved in the conventional market. The reason behind this is, we have 37 categories, we are operating 6 to 7 of them fully, and others are not fully assorted. You won’t find many categories over there. After we enrich all the categories, we shall move into major marketing. We are trying and testing the customers to see how they behave and what they need. After this, we shall finalize and tune in. We hope that this would work because the team is experienced. And, experience is everything in the retail market.
Q: The supply chain is a very important thing. Do you feel any challenges over that area?
DAS: In Bangladesh, it’s a big challenge because you don’t get much variety on products. Many renowned products like Levis and others, don’t supply to anyone as a merchant.
They have their own office and it’s an open market. So, we need to appoint people for those brands and build a supply chain by ourselves. We need to analyze the market and train people accordingly. So this is a big challenge for us. This is a major problem in all e-commerce businesses.
We are planning to appoint 100 to 110 people as our supplier. They will supply their products to us to showcase.
Q: Where do you see ‘esho.com’ after 10 years?
DAS: After 10 years…I want to see ‘esho.com’ creating a major impact on the economy by connecting different levels of people throughout the market.. This is our motto.
Q: How would you define ‘esho. com’ in one sentence?
DAS: I would say, “Ja kichu proyojon, esho.com”. It goes for both the ends. The customer will fulfill their needs and we will do business through this platform.
