Storrea is an e-commerce platform, providing an opportunity to the aspiring entrepreneurs of Bangladesh to create their own online stores within minutes and start selling right away from their websites. It is trying to solve the problem of "having no e-commerce website" for local entrepreneurs.
“We are living in the hey days for tech startups in Bangladesh. Now, Bangladeshis are more inclined to using technology to change their way of living than ever before. Through Storrea, we wanted to build a platform that actually solves big problems of local online merchants, and in doing so helps Bangladesh’s e-commerce marketplace.” –Ashfaq Rahman Co-Founder,CEO of Storrea.
Currently, there are approximately 7,500 Facebook sellers (entrepreneurs) in Bangladesh, who only sell through their Facebook pages. So what happens if one’s Facebook page is reported? Because they have no e-commerce websites, the business eventually crashes and loses credibility to customers.
There are around 1,200 marketplace sellers (entrepreneurs) who sell their products on different marketplaces in Bangladesh. Moreover, there are approximately 200 independent online stores in the country. Again, because they have no independent selling platform, some showcase their products on marketplaces, where thousands of products of the same kind are displayed in one page, and customers have a little probability to know about someone’s specific products. If the merchants think of the brand value and uniqueness of their products, they won’t want their products to get lost in the din and bustle of these marketplaces. But, developing and hosting a standard e-commerce website including payment methods, SEO optimisation, marketing tools etc are really big challenges for them. And here comes Storrea to work as a bridge to fill the gaps among software developers, payment gateway providers, digital marketers and online merchants.
Most online merchants in Bangladesh who have e-commerce websites of their own are stuck by the thoughts of cost, time, and headache of later maintenance. Moreover, they need some other services like inclusion of payment gateway, SEO for their websites, digital marketing of their products and so on to run their businesses successfully, which are not available in one place. Storrea aims to liberate these merchants from all those limitations. Storrea has integrated all those services in its powerful Admin Panel. Merchants can easily upload products and contents from time to time using Storrea’s platform. They can change their storefronts with innumerable options and colours, customise the tabs and add new pages in websites anytime they want. In a word, Storrea provides a platform for new entrepreneurs to launch their business right away with their unique products and establish the brand value of their products and shops.
“We have developed a web application to allow online merchants to have full control over their websites.” – SM Shahnewaz Shawn, Co-Founder,CTO of Storrea.
Storrea provides a pool of features, claiming itself as the country’s only complete e-commerce platform. All the requirements of an e-commerce platform have been implemented in Storrea. One only needs to have a valid e-mail ID to open and operate an online store with Storrea. Merchants get admin panels that guide them to adorn their websites completely. Storrea also provides a collection of standard e-commerce website themes. Merchants can pick any theme they want to integrate into their websites. Storrea is primarily a powerful website builder that allows merchants to have a long list of options in custom themes and embellish their websites. They can manage their orders, shipments, customers and also get other resourceful business analytic reports to track the progress of their businesses. Last but not the least, merchants can use marketing tools and SEO tools, associated with Storrea, to have better advertisement of their products and guide their sales. They can link up their Facebook pages with their websites and allow customers to buy directly from Facebook stores. They can have custom domains and yet manage their websites from the Storrea admin panel.
Over the last few months, still privately funded, Storrea has helped to create over 1,500 stores. Currently, it has over 20 paid merchants who are selling their products via its platform. With an aim of creating a ‘Digital Bangladesh’, Storrea wants to help future entrepreneurs scale up and compete in a global scale.
About Team Storrea:
“It gives us immense pleasure to boast of a world class Bangladeshi Technology Product that has solely been developed by Bangladeshi Youth targeting Bangladeshi Youth Entrepreneurs.”- Hasib Bin Rafique, Co Founder, COO, Storrea.
Sixpeople have been involved in creating this platform, who are currently working in different local and international software companies. At first the idea of Storrea was seeded by Ashfaq Rahman; an entrepreneur, working closely in Bangladesh Software industry for last 5-6 years. In 2015, Shahnewaz Shawn, ex-lecturer of IUT, kick-started the idea with Ashfaq. Then, Shawn approached Hasib; his friend from Canada, who is pursuing his Masters from the University Of Calgary, from the same university Shawn did his MS. These three were working together for some time and then in the later phases, Joy and Tarif got involved when they felt the necessity of business people on Board. After successful completion of some new features integration, Arman, a friend of Shawn from IUT, joined the team to look over the business operation and the testing of Storrea’ssoftware. It was a fine blend of Technical and Business people, who knew about the technological limitation in Bangladesh’s business world.
