Online shopping still in infancy, but growing

One ecommerce portal hopes overall business would reach billion-dollar figure by 2020

LAHORE: With several ecommerce portals coming online, each of which is striving to be different from the other and offering a variety of products at competitive prices, the urban and semi-urban shoppers in Pakistan are acknowledging the importance.

Although the penetration of the sector is inferior compared to the actual size of the retail business in Pakistan, Kaymu.pk has said that it is pleased with the progress the country has made in the digital sphere.



“No one actually knows the actual size of ecommerce or m-commerce in Pakistan but leading market players have estimated its current share at 0.2%, much inferior to the actual retail size,” said Kaymu.pk Country Manager Ali Zain Sheikh.

“This figure does not include sales through Facebook and other such pages,” he added.

Pakistan’s retail market size has been estimated at $152 billion by Planet Retail. Sheikh said that out of this figure, ecommerce share was between $60 million to $100 million. “We are expecting this figure to reach at $1 billion by 2020, but that depends on how the sector performs and how the government facilitates it,” he added.

Kaymu.pk is a venture of Rocket Internet GMBH, a German Incubator. The venture started in late 2013, and, to date, has catered to over 260 cities, towns and districts.

Interestingly the management’s strategy is to penetrate the second and third tier cities.

Currently, more than 50% sales come from Turbat, Lakki Marwat, Chiniot, Rohri and Pano Aqil, whereas 46% of its sales come from mega cities like Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad/Rawalpindi.



In 2015, Sheikh added another dimension to boost the sales graph.

He introduced the online business to business (B2B) wholesale services in Pakistan, with over 120 wholesalers from various verticals including clothing, electronics, cosmetics and various product categories.

“I started it from Karachi and it is growing now, not in terms of number of orders but in terms of value,” he said.

Statistics for Kaymu have changed drastically over the last couple of years. For instance in 2014 it was working with 600 retailers which have now increased to 15,000, offering 250,000 different products.

It was handling around 1,000 transactions per day with an average turnover of Rs1.2 million. The average number of transactions per day has now increased to 3,000.

“Our average turnover has witnessed an increase over the years and Kaymu’s fashion category, which includes apparel brands and jewellery, contributes the maximum share. That segment contributes just a little less than half of our total sales,” said Sheikh.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 1^st, 2016.

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