E-bakra

Bakra mandi: cows swishing their tails to keep away flies, goats trotting around, leaving a trail of poop behind.

Before they throng the mosque for prayers on Eid day, they must flock to the mandis to pick the qurbani ka jaanwar. Armed with enthusiasm, wads of cash and an inflated sense of their own knowledge about goats, cows, sheep and camels, they hoof it to the markets that sprout in and around urban centres right before Eid. Yet the negotiations between seller and customer are anything but simple. The vendor quotes a hefty price, the customer bleats in protest. This contest of wills continues until the buyer ends up cowed by the seller’s superior knowledge, and the ritual is complete.

This is a fairly common sight every year at every mandi. In Karachi alone, over 200,000 animals are brought from the surrounding areas and about 10 million people visit different mandis in the city in the run-up to Eid.

But if Humair Mannan has his way, this would all be a thing of the past. Not one content to follow the herd, Humair is the creator of www.eidqurbani.com.pk, a website from which you can buy sacrificial animals for Eidul Azha from the comfort of your own home. Humair envisions a hassle-free Eid without the need to bargain with animal traders who regularly fleece their customers.

An offshoot of his family’s successful cattle and dairy farm in Karachi, what sets www. eidqurbani.com.pk apart is that all the animals advertised on the website are reared on the family farm. But the website’s biggest selling point is the fact that — unlike the mandi, where not only do the prices rise in the run-up to Eid, they also depend on how hard the customer bargains — its prices remain constant and competitive.

“I came up with the idea two years ago. Because of the situation in the city, it had become really unsafe to drive all the way to the mandi with all that cash. Plus, people found it hard to take out the time,” says Humair. “I did some research online but most of the websites at that time did not even have pictures of the actual animals, so the customer never knew what was being ordered.”

When Humair, who also runs his own textile business, explained his idea to his friends, they predicted that the website would never take off.  “My family also expressed doubts about selling sacrificial animals through the internet but I told them to leave it to me. Now all of them help out with the website,” explains Humair.

www.eidqurbani.com.pk has already developed a loyal consumer base. Aisha first started using the service when her father became too ill to go to the mandi to purchase animals. Yameen, another satisfied customer, has been using the service for the past three years. “I transitioned to buying online after the situation of the city worsened and I haven’t looked back since,” says Yameen.

It wasn’t always that easy. “Previously, sales depended on our personal contacts. We would start booking, a month to two before Eid by calling all our contacts, who would then visit the farm and choose an animal. The remaining animals would go to the mandi,” explains Mannan. “But now, because of the website, customers call me themselves to ask when they can book their sacrificial animals. This year we even received an order from a gentleman in Tajikistan. He found us online and since he is coming to Pakistan only a few days before Eid, he will not have the time to go out and purchase a sacrificial animal, so he booked one through us.”

The website allows prospective customers to browse through scores of animals, each of which comes with an array of impressive specs. Code numbers, exhaustive detail, pictures and even embedded videos all aid the purchaser. After choosing an animal, half of the payment has to be made. “We accept cash, cheques, Western Union money transfers and even Paypal,” says Humair proudly. “The rest is payable after delivery, which we provide free of charge, all over Karachi.”

Still, not everyone is convinced, and there are those who prefer to buy their animals the traditional way, considering this as much a part of the Eid celebrations as the qurbani itself. Zain, for example, is adamant that buying online is not the way to go, “I would rather take the trouble of buying the goat, slaughtering it and distributing the meat myself, rather than delegating it to someone else, because that’s what Eid is all about.”

Catering to what’s clearly still a niche market doesn’t bother Humair much as he loads his pick-up with animals and drives off to another customer. Clearly there are enough non-traditionalists out there to make ends meet. 

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, November 6^th,  2011.