Mahmudul Hasan

With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continuing to force consumers from around the world to shop from home, online sales in Bangladesh were expected to see turbocharged growth similar to international trends.

Despite some ups and downs, the country’s e-commerce industry has ballooned by about 100 per cent ever since the first Covid-19 infection in the country was announced in March.

However, the growth witnessed during this six-month period still falls short of previous projections.

While a number of e-commerce platforms that mainly retail essential goods are overwhelmed by an unprecedented number of orders, those that sell lifestyle and luxury items saw the demand for their products plummet to rock bottom.

For example, Chaldal, Bangladesh’s leading online shopping platform for household goods, has defied the volatile economic situation to absolutely dominate the market.

Thanks to an increased demand for home delivery of groceries, hygiene products and other consumer staples, Chaldal enjoyed a 140 per cent rise in its daily delivery count inside Dhaka.

The online retailer now executes 6,000 deliveries each day while the number was 2,500 in the pre-pandemic period.

“The demand for rice, vegetables and hygiene products has been great since late March,” said Waseem Alim, chief executive officer (CEO) of Chaldal.

At a time when most businesses were laying off much of their staff in a bid to survive the Covid-19 fallout, Chaldal added 560 new jobs to take its number of employees to 1,400. This a significant feat for any local e-commerce site, he added.

Launched in 2013, the online retail platform makes deliveries all over Dhaka and its adjacent areas, including Narayanganj, with its own delivery mechanism.

However, Alim believes that online sales have not grown as much as was expected.

“All the media hype led people to believe that Bangladesh’s e-commerce industry would grow 10 times larger due to the pandemic but this is not true,” he said.

The Chaldal CEO also pointed out the inadequacy of their existing delivery mechanisms and absence of a smooth supply chain as the main obstacles for growth in the overall industry.