How does ekShop work?
ekShop is the world's first integrated assisted rural e-commerce platform, which incorporates all the major and trusted e-commerce, payments, and logistic players into one platform through API and acts as a national e-commerce facilitator and infrastructure backbone.
A search in its platform can compare similar products drawn from multiple e-commerce platforms in a single window, and the same system enables producers and retailers to sell their products to the market participants as a single entry point.
They can go to government-owned digital centres or virtually enter the platform and upload their product to ekShop.
It will automatically be available to ekShop’s partners’ e-commerce websites.
We are continuously trying to escalate in the global e-commerce market and target the business to government, business to business, and business to consumer markets.
How do you earn revenue?
As the core focus has always been the rural population, ekShop did not compete with the market.
Instead, it emerged as a supporting force.
Recently, ekShop is earning a commission from within the platform, such as providing sales, logistics and payment services.
It also has numerous revenue sources from global operations, which varies from country to country.
How is the e-commerce ecosystem benefited by ekShop?
Collaborating with government and relevant bodies, we work on policy support implementation like introducing the escrow payment security system in Bangladesh, ensuring the utmost financial safety between entrepreneurs, producers, and consumers.
We are now assisting the Commerce Ministry to develop a Central Complaint Management System (CCMS) and Central Logistics Tracking Platform (CLTP), which can equip the ecosystem with interoperability accountability and help the government track revenue to work on market growth.
ekShop appeared to be a blessing to rural consumers struggling to purchase essential products such as life-saving medicines, especially amid the Covid-19 nationwide shutdown with its designated service phone-e-nrittoponno (333-5).
While 'Food for Nation' platform eased farmers and local businesses to post their ads for Agri products at local market prices, leaving them not wary about middlemen and selling perishables items.
It is also making strides in providing a ready market for female entrepreneurs. Currently, 77% of the rural products marketed through ekShop are produced by women.
It empowers cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises (CMSMEs) led mainly by women entrepreneurs with open commerce platforms such as Anondomela, Joyeeta, WE, Digital Haat, and e-market of Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC) and SME Foundation.
We are currently working on inducting micro merchants as e-commerce agents to facilitate employment in rural areas.
The micro-merchants earn from the commission by transacting on the platform. They also act as local logistic hubs to enable last-mile delivery and help reduce the delivery cost of goods by implementing the service locally.
More than 2,000 micro-merchants have already been inducted in more than seven districts, and a further expansion is in the works for Bangladesh’s districts. If successful, this model would expand nationwide, potentially creating employment for 20,000 or more youth.
Besides, with the support of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), it works to improve the online business capacity of entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, particularly women, empowering them to confidently adopt and leverage new digital services to enhance their competitiveness and performance.
Logistics, mainly delivery service countrywide, is an issue for e-commerce. How does ekShop address that?
ekShop's ecosystem facilitates its 17 local and four international partner e-commerce and eight logistic companies with nearly a thousand regional warehouses and 11,400 ekShop points, including more than 6,500 digital centres powered by more than 56,000 entrepreneurs and merchants, enabling a robust national and international chain of goods transactions.
Furthermore, ekShop's collaboration with World Trade Organization and Universal Postal Union helps it build capacity and technical assistance that aims to enhance human resource capacity to implement global easy export/easy import solutions targeted primarily at small enterprises.
How has ekShop’s global expansion been and how does it work?
Targeting approximately 30 million non-resident Bangladeshis living abroad, ekShop has expanded its chain of services internationally to Malaysia, Singapore, and the latest, Nepal.
Soon, ekShop is planning to expand into countries in the Gulf region and diligently move into North America and Europe.
It is in discussions with the UN Technology Bank in Turkey to expand the platform model to 47 least developed countries (LDCs), with work ongoing in Yemen, South Sudan, Turkey and Colombia.
For example, the ekShop model is customized with the context of the host country.
It currently works as an advertising site and mingling hub for buyers and sellers to trade products in South Sudan.
It is also customized in Yemen by connecting its local e-commerce platforms and modelled as a logistics aggregator to bridge individual delivery points, telco sales points, transports, and courier companies.
This model is taken as a livelihood model for displaced people and refugees to earn by selling products or digital work on an e-commerce platform.
All these positive changes and this revolutionary model of ekShop has received recognition as the winners of the 2019 APICTA Award, 2019 ITEX award, UN facility fund competition in 2019, 2020 WSIS Champion Award, BRH catalytic fund winner in 2020 and Bangladeshi Prime Minister’s “2021 Digital Bangladesh Award."