E-commerce on Eid: A growing appetite for buying sacrificial animals online

Websites offering e-purchases, packaging flourish during Eid season.

KARACHI:

In a sign that the business of sacrificial animals is gradually moving towards e-commerce, Qurbanionline.com – the country’s largest online platform for ordering these animals – is taking as many as 50% of its orders through Paypal, a popular American e-commerce business that allows payments and money transfers online.

Last year, the site booked around 6,700 orders. Of these, roughly half were from overseas Pakistanis who paid their bills through Paypal. This year, the website is expected to book over 7,500 orders, a jump of 12%, by the third day of Eidul Azha, the site’s co-founder Iftikhar Rizvi said. And the market is only expected to grow.

Rizvi says that despite the growth in online and retail booking of sacrificial animals on Eid, the market has not crossed even 5% of the total sales of animals in Pakistan.



“Our business is growing continuously and we have reached a point where most of our customers are regulars. We are expected to add about 1,000 new customers this year and our overall growth will be between 10 to 20%,” he said. “Data shows that the industry of online buying and selling of animals is still in its infancy, but its prospects are high because of the ever-increasing number of households in Pakistan.”

While overseas customers complete the sales process entirely online, customers within Pakistan place the orders online but pay their bills through cash or cheques. Thus leading figures in the industry are divided over the growth of such businesses, with some arguing that sites like Qurbanionline do not even qualify as ‘e-commerce’.

“E-commerce is something when one orders something online and pays its bill online. If he is paying its bill through cash, then it can be called social media advertising but not e-commerce,” Tohfay.com’s founder Mehdi Hasnain said.

Pakistan lags far behind neighbouring countries like China and India when it comes to e-commerce. “Personally, I do not think the sale of sacrificial animals is going to lead e-commerce sales in the country,” Hasnain commented. “The Pakistani e-commerce market should start growing from the online sales of electronic items as it grew in other developed markets.”

After the success of sites such as Qurbanionline, Cowmandi.com and Bakra.pk, the entry of Meat One - the country’s leading chain of specialized meat - three years ago took the competition to the next level. Those within the industry say that after the entry of brands like Meat One, the competition will continue to grow in the coming years.

“The market is showing an annual growth of about 25 to 30%, which is not bad at all. People who order through us want peace of mind and they want to avoid the hassle of going to the market to buy animals themselves,” Meat One Chief Executive Kamran Khalili told The Express Tribune from Saudi Arabia. Like other leading websites for sacrificial animals, Meat One accepts payments online and through cash on delivery.

Khalili said the service charges of his company do not cross more than 10 to 15% of the market rates of animals. “The value addition that we do is justified as we not only select a healthy animal, we also sacrifice it and then pack its meat,” he said.

Despite the high demand and Meat One’s success during the Eid season, PK Meat & Food Company - a popular chain of frozen meat and a competitor - is not ready to throw its cap in the ring. “We can enter in the sacrificial animals’ business but right now we do not want to stretch ourselves too thin. For us, it would be unnecessary to take this step right now,” PK Meat & Food Company Chief Executive Saqib Butt told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2014.