Farjana, a working mother of a two-year-old, who resides in the capital's Mirpur area, has been heavily dependent on baby diapers, ordering them mostly online through Chaldal.
Experiencing parenthood during the pandemic, she has been ordering Tk7000 worth of diapers on average each month from the platform initially, and currently consumes around Tk4000-5000 worth of diapers each month from Chaldal.
"Baby diapers are essential for me as a working mother, it is a lifesaver," Farjana told Dhaka Tribune.
“But not all diapers are the same, and it is not enough to have just any diaper, my child deserves the best quality I can afford, and running out of diapers is a nightmare that I avoid at all costs replenishing my stock frequently,” she further added.
Like Farjana, such has been the case for many working parents who have helped the diaper industry boom over the last two decades since its use in the local market.
First came the imported diaper brands that dominated the market for a good few years. Then local companies started to notice the demand and local brands started to manufacture locally, that currently have significant penetration.
Today, while imported diaper brands continue to enjoy a significant presence in the market, it no longer dominates the market, and the need for diapers is expected to grow.
According to a World Health Organization report, Bangladesh will be the seventh-largest consumer of baby diapers in the world by 2025 as the domestic market for baby diapers keeps expanding fast, due to the rising purchasing power of parents and a familiarity with the comfort of using diapers for newborns.
This is where Chaldal was quick on its feet.
Like every other product vertical in Bangladesh, diapers are also slowly making a transition to online commerce. Industry insiders suggest that the online market is currently somewhere between 15-20% of the total market.
While the online market remains fragmented today with a lot of small players, it can safely be predicted that the online share of the diapers market is going to grow many folds in the coming years.
Although Chaldal started off as a grocery platform, it has always been deliberate when it comes to expansion. In fact, some of the major product verticals Chaldal has expanded over the past few years, have all originated from customer demand.
The platform started selling diapers in 2015 as part of its expansion when there was an apparent demand among its customers for diapers and related baby products.
“Diapers are a focus category for us. The local diaper market is around Tk600 crores annually. We saw diapers as a natural extension and it was driven by consumer demand,” Waseem Alim, the CEO of Chaldal told Dhaka Tribune.
The company even established a dedicated platform diaper.com.bd to get search traffic but was not able to put enough resources behind it according to its CEO.
Started organically, the category has since evolved.
According to the company, it currently delivers around 1500 diapers daily and claims to provide the best available prices for diapers in the market that are genuine and have the best quality.
The expansion paid off further, as the company today has a growing baby products business, diapers leading the vertical.
Today, Chaldal has a meticulous process of how it runs the baby care products category. The company says it puts special attention on sourcing baby care products to ensure quality.
Chaldal directly works with prominent importers for imported diapers and the local manufacturers for local diapers.
The company goes to extra lengths to ensure that all the products are genuine and quality is exacting.
Although Chaldal does not manufacture any of the products it sells, the company takes quality seriously and only works with reputed suppliers. The seriousness has resulted in consistent customer value.
“Baby products are a sensitive category. Parents are okay to sacrifice when it comes to the quality of their own products. But if their kid gets a rash, it affects their life and their sleep. When it comes to diapers, parents aren’t willing to give that same leeway for a product. Hence, the main challenge of selling diapers online is gaining the trust and faith of parents,” another Chaldal official told Dhaka Tribune.
Already having a reputation and awareness in the category, Chaldal is now looking to improve its supply chain and efficiency in the category so that it can offer greater benefits to customers while ensuring a healthy margin.