• Home
• /
• Business

Kaymu gaining steam

Online shopping in Pakistan is gaining traction, with an increasing number of customers visiting online shopping portals, top officials at online marketplace Kaymu.com have revealed.

Ahmed Khan and Christian Schroeder, co-managing directors for the Asia region at Kaymu.com, spoke to Khaleej Times on the growing e-commerce industry in Pakistan, and how that has affected Kaymu’s operations in the country.

“Kaymu was officially launched in Pakistan in September 2013; before that the team was active under the name of Azmalo.pk since December 2012,” said Khan. “We started off Kaymu.com taking inspiration from amazon.com, but soon realised that its model is highly complicated for evolving markets, when you take into account the logistics and warehousing. So we quickly shifted to the marketplace model.”

He added: “Working on a marketplace model essentially means that Kaymu.com does not keep any inventory. Kaymu.com is operational in about 30 countries around the world. In Asia it is active in five countries, and its operations in this region are headed out of Pakistan. Kaymu.pk is active all over Pakistan; we have received orders from Quetta and even Waziristan.”

“Kaymu.com is a simple easy-to-use online shopping platform. Essentially all you have to do is visit Kaymu, using the URL of your respective country, select the item you wish to buy, place the order, and just pay when the order is delivered to you,” Schroeder explained.

“The idea behind our marketplace model is buyer meets seller. We have a B2C model, where businesses list various products on our website. We also have a C2C model, where anyone can come and place any product they want on Kaymu and buyers can browse and choose items they want to acquire,” he revealed. “Kaymu provides its customers with a range of features; some of which include the shopping cart, wish list, delivery tracking, discount coupons, quick response times, as well as great efficiencies within the system.”

Asked about the response to the shopping portal, Schroeder revealed that the response had been “outstanding”.

“Our numbers have been consistently growing since inception and in the last six weeks we have been able to triple the number of sellers selling their products on our website to 2,000 sellers. The amount of sellers is very important to our business because we can generate network effects and stimulate competition among sellers to offer buyers the cheapest prices,” he said.

A venture of Rocket Internet, Kaymu offers a range of products — both new and used — such as smartphones, clothing, shoes, furniture, home appliances, electronics, jewellery and books. The portal caters to an average of 30,000 visitors on a daily basis, and witnesses an average of 900 orders daily.

“Businesses all around the globe are looking to open an e-commerce wing to increase their outreach and attract a wider audience; same is the case with emerging markets, including Pakistan. However, emerging markets have not reached the levels of Internet penetration seen by developed countries, but the numbers are growing exponentially. Thus, the opportunity is much larger, as these countries skip several evolution steps in their retail landscape and purchasing behavior. They directly go to mobile e-commerce,” said Schroeder.

Asked if the firm had plans to introduce alternative payment methods, Khan said: “Kaymu currently has the cash on delivery model in place so that customers feel at ease about their transactions. We are looking at alternative payment options as well, and are equipped to engage these payment methods once the market matures. For instance, in Pakistan we are in talks with mobile companies to assess the possibility of using mobile branchless banking for payment solutions.”

However, he stressed that the alternative payment methods will only work once the market matures and consumer trust increases. “What buyers need to understand is that e-commerce is one of the fastest growing industries in the world,” he said.

Schroeder added: “We also need to understand that not too long ago this trust issue around e-commerce was prevalent in European and other such markets as well. As the markets evolve, invariably, these issues take a back seat. I am confident that these emerging markets will follow the same trend and eventually mature in the next few years.”

He further revealed that Kaymu was developing a mobile app, which would be available to customers very soon. “We do already have a mobile adaptive website so buyers should not have any issue in availing our services on their smart devices,” he noted. “The launch of 3G services in Pakistan is expected to boost the e-commerce industry as it effectively means that in the next few months over a 100 million mobile users will potentially have access to high-speed Internet and as a result to our website,” said Khan.

— rohma@khaleejtimes.com