Mohammad Rassel, managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) of Evaly, on Thursday claimed that he was doing business in accordance with the prevailing rules and regulations of the country.
"I will not say that we (Evaly) know everything and did nothing wrong. But we are not operating unethically, rather we are working to build a 'Digital Bangladesh' as per the prime minister's vision," he told the media at a virtual briefing on the day.
Stating e-commerce as an innovative business model in various countries including the USA, China and India, he said there is immense potential of its success in Bangladesh.
"But investors rely on market readiness. To prepare the local market, we undertook some initiatives which may have been misinterpreted," he admitted.
Denying allegations of unethical business practice, Rassel said their business model did not resemble multi-level marketing (MLM), rather their main problem was delay in product delivery.
"Our delivery time is 7-10 days. But delays depend on some issues with the suppliers and also some policies. The problems are not different from those faced by Amazon or other e-commerce companies. We need some time to recover from this. We have already opened a separate crisis management team to address this issue," he revealed.
He urged customers to keep their faith in him.
Mohammad Rassel
The Evaly MD refuted any allegations of money laundering, imploring the Bangladesh Bank to scrutinize his company if someone complained against them.
“Evaly wants to be the number one e-commerce website in the country. You will see that the service may not be 100% accurate, as the number of buyers and sellers is very high, but we never stopped,” he further said.
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Recalling how Evaly grew from five staff members to 700 at present, he also said they have 15,000 registered delivery heroes where about 4,000 people work on a regular basis.
He predicted that the number of employees would reach 2,000 by the end of 2020.
Admitting to failures
Rassel admitted the complaints on delivery and service, but shifted the blame on systemic limitations.
"So far the company delivered 2.1 million products worth over Tk1,500 crore. Evaly has 21,000 small vendors, 3.7 million customers and seven apps," he beamed.
“We certainly had a business goal and gave maximum discount to buyers with maximum commission from sellers and/or manufacturers. We adopted some strategies to make up for the loss of some products with other products. It is a business model. Today we have 20,000 small sellers and 2,000 corporate sellers directly connected with us. Among these, some are multinational corporations and some renowned domestic sellers,” he further added.
He urged everyone to support and help Evaly to survive, as well as recover from the limitations since the purpose of the e-commerce company was to benefit both the consumers and the sellers through direct coordination between the two.
