While Pakistan’s leading e-commerce stores offer high-end and branded stuff catering to tech-savvy urban, middle and upper-middle classes, a Karachi-based startup, Buyon.pk, has targeted a different market segment altogether.

Buyon.pk is an online retail marketplace catering to small business owners. Anything from a pair of jeans to electronic appliances, the website displays it all. But so do all others, right? Then what’s the difference? Well, the answer lies in both their supply and demand.

Their audience includes vendors for small and medium enterprises from Pakistan’s second and third-tier cities. So instead of selling them a kurta from J. or Gul Ahmed, Buyon would sell unbranded makes from local entrepreneurs. And now they are going to add artisans as their suppliers as well in hopes of capturing the handicrafts market.

How does it work? Vendors register on buyon.pk and after screening, they upload listings on the website. For each item sold, the company charges suppliers a certain commission. In addition to that, there are paid marketing plans. As for the buyers, they can either order directly from the website or through WhatsApp and then pay in cash or through a digital wallet.

Like her business, Anum Kamran’s journey is also unconventional. It was after giving birth to a baby — a time when many women see their careers ending - that hers took a new direction. Out of restlessness during her maternity break, she started importing jewellery and other items and selling them through an online retail page on Facebook. In 2014, she moved from an inventory-owned online retail to e-commerce.

They are currently self-funded but Anum is looking for investors. “We need external funding to accelerate our growth but we don’t need just any investor: it has to be someone whose objectives are aligned with ours,” she says.

She, however, isn’t particularly optimistic about Pakistan’s investment culture which has largely a ‘seth’ mindset and unless institutional investors take a more proactive approach, things would stay the same.

How did this move to go beyond the metropolitans come about though? Usually when local startups launch, they start out from Karachi/Lahore and then move inwards. “When Daraz, with its Rocket Internet money, entered Pakistan, we knew we had to pivot so we took this route,” tells Anum.

But her niche comes with its own additional challenges. Not only does it require training suppliers to take pictures and upload listings on website but also needs a dedicated customer service team that can cater to buyers not that familiar with tech.

The most common issues faced by e-commerce businesses in Pakistan — payment and logistics — are even more challenging for Buyon since they cater to second and third-tier cities of Pakistan. While the issue of payments has been amply addressed thanks to mobile wallet services such as Easypaisa and JazzCash, but the logistic challenges continue to remain as real as before.

“Most of the houses in small towns don’t have a defined address so the product delivery is a significant challenge. Adding to that is the ever present issue of unattended deliveries,” says Anum. But as internet services penetrate into these cities and advancement of GPS technology with better tracking options, she believes, these issues would resolve in due time.

One of the strategically core issues faced by online marketplaces in Pakistan is of credibility. Forget smaller towns, even in Karachi and Lahore; there is a sizeable population amongst the educated which is reluctant to shop online. There is a trust deficit that needs to be addressed.

But that issue should solve itself as more and more online stores surface on the digital retail landscape, right? Anum, however, disagrees arguing that “ the rise in number of online retail stores have actually hurt the credibility of overall enterprise. A certain website (no naming), in particular, ruined it for the rest of us,” she says.

Unclear as to how that’d be? Don’t worry, I got you. Think of the times when there were only a couple of news channels with fixed bulletin hours but we got (mostly) credible and at least news-worthy updates. Then came the boom and everyone with even a bit of money thought they too could open a news channel and we all know what happened to the industry’s credibility after that.

But how long can things go on like this (in e-commerce, not news)? Anum feels that Alibaba’s acquisition of Daraz could be exactly what the industry needs: a global giant bringing trust (and money) with it. As for the payment issues, she believes, we need reliable escrow agents in that area who can eliminate risk from online transactions.

In a country where English is a second language, alien to most of the population, only time will tell whether Buyon — an English language site — can make inroads into the targeted cities of Pakistan. Maybe integrating local languages into the website could go a long way. Anum, of course, is aware of that but feels there are more urgent things to be addressed first.

Tech — including the e-commerce and online retail business — has faced criticism around the globe over its lack of workplace gender diversity and Pakistan is further behind. How is it then for not only a woman, but a mother? Anum feels things are in the right direction and there are now plenty of young girls entering this scene.

“When I started out, there were times when I was the only female in a room full of men and at times not taken seriously. Sometimes people would be surprised that I was the CEO but now it’s certainly different,” she recalls.

Buyon’s performance might actually serve as a good metric to assess how far Pakistan has come in this internet age. Whether all that talk of digitisation being confined to the urban elite or it actually has takers beyond the cities would ultimately determine how far we have come.

The writer is member of staff:

m.mutaherkhan@gmail.com

Twitter: @MutaherKhan

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2018