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In the lead up to November 27, the day Daraz.pk launched the first Black Friday in Pakistan, we knew that weeks of teasing had spread the word enough that friends and acquaintances were prodding us for a sneak preview of the deals on Black Friday.

We had, however, promised our vendors to keep the deals a secret not only to the public but also to most employees. In fact, only a handful of brands had agreed to spill out the exact product deals in the lead up — the deals were genuinely a surprise for the public and many internal employees and our friends and family.

At midnight, as we celebrated leading to the countdown, we knew that this would be the biggest sale event for Daraz till date. We watched as the number of visitors on Daraz soar. We gasped in awe and our hearts beat faster as we knew this was way too many people, way too many people.

The traffic started to flood our international cloud servers, servers that assumed it was a hacker attack and started to protect the website, shutting off and choking most customers at checkout.

Within 20 minutes, we had reached our daily sales target.

Within two hours, we crossed the most optimistic target we had a contingency plan for.

On the one hand we had more visitors on our website than ever at a single given time. On the other, we were losing them because our IT was having trouble supporting the massive load, thinking of it as a threat and shutting down impeding access.

Fire drill calls to the server support and product teams allowed us to kick back into normal mode within a few minutes. The website started to be responsive again, finally, thankfully, and orders started to flood in; even in the wee hours of the morning.

We were awestruck. People were ordering products in categories that historically never sold much. They were buying fridges, washing machines and air conditioners in winter as if they were buying candy.

To top it off, a third of the orders were prepaid, simply unheard of in the e-commerce space in Pakistan where lack of trust forces people to only choose cash on delivery.

The hype that Telenor built for Easypay really paid off: throughout the event, everyone was asking how to use Easypay, an evolution of Telenor’s Easypaisa that also allows Visa and Mastercard cards to be used for payments online.

For fashion or phones, for appliances or beauty products, everyone wanted to use the 20 per cent incremental discount on already discounted products by using Easypay (or 10pc when products were priced under Rs15,000).

Not only did the event build the brand of Easypay as an electronic payment gateway but the event saw unparalleled awareness built around completely new brands and services.

Take our sponsors MediaTek as an example: before Black Friday, few knew that MediaTek chips are the backbone of most Android phones sold in Pakistan. InnJoo, another smartphone brand that sells exclusively on Daraz sold out on all three new model releases. PTCL sold unparalleled digital products, the first time we’ve offered such services online. Ponds, too, sold out a large number of amazing bundles within a few hours, becoming one of the top-selling products.

On the commercial side: we sold out thousands of products from completely new brands like Jackpot (for small appliances, which literally had a Jackpot through the sale) and Elite, which sold countless heaters and water dispensers.

The first time ever, leading appliance brands like Dawlance, Kenwood and Westpoint collaborated with Daraz at scale and liquidated thousands of products for the brands in the lead up to winters, completely unprecedented at this scale even in the offline market. And fashion sales on the day were almost as much as the total sales made in two months.

On mobile phones: more Microsoft phones sold in a single day than any retailer has made possible in the offline space in Pakistan and we were able to bring limited quantity deals from Apple which officially launched in Pakistan the iPhone 6s with a 1 year warranty plus some viral deals from Samsung on the S6.

To add to the hype, Haier Smartphones offered an autographed ball and t-shirt from the man of the match of the Pakistan v. England T-20 match held on Black Friday, November 27th.

We understand that many of our customers lost deals that they were completely excited to grab due to the mad-rush at our gates or user overload on Easypay checkout, and we are working 18 hour days to solve for wherever possible.

We now know better that we should prepare our international cloud servers to literally prepare for a flood next year and are working on strengthening our IT and product for this capability. An unheard of success, however, is that a third of our customers from Black Friday actually received their deals (at record pace) on Black Friday itself, courtesy to speedy logistics from Leopards and TCS this weekend.

Seeing viral videos of women fighting over deals at malls in Pakistan and newsletters from leading brands in Pakistan also announcing a Black Friday, we now know we have created a new landmark in retail in Pakistan.

From now on, you will see a Black Friday every year and most malls and brands will have a mega sale just like everywhere else in the world

Super proud to break records

Records for more products sold ever on a single day of e-commerce in Pakistan.

Record of the most number of phones or appliances sold by any retailer in the offline space in one day.

Record of over a 3rd of the payments being electronic pre-payments, and record for the number of smiles we brought to people who won all the deals.

We made history and every one of the 500+ employees at Daraz has a reason to hold their heads high. Our hard work paid off and our customers came out as winners! May we have more to come!

Sincerely, Muneeb Maayr CEO - Daraz.pk

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