Tell us about your career.
It started while I was an undergrad student in Buet. I was always enterprising. Be it business or social work I was very much involved. Coming from a village, my partner and classmate Liton and I had to struggle to earn a living while study at the same time. As a solution, we started with just Tk12000, under the name Onnorokom; it has been 12 years since.
Tell us how you came up with the idea of online business, Rokomari.
We have been thinking about e-commerce for quite some time now. Considering the traffic and the hustle, e-commerce seemed a solution to bypass the congestion during shopping.
One and half years ago, we initiated our new venture Rokomari.com. The initial idea of selling books were to make them available all around the country, especially in remote areas and catering the reading habit. Reading not only increases knowledge, it inspires creativity, purity, moral building, critical thinking, imagination, and vision.
Amazon and Wikipedia have heavily influenced us; they were the pioneers of the idea.
What are the added benefits of subscribing to Rokomari?
With cash on delivery system, there is little need for added benefits. Any customer can cancel an order after receiving the book, if he or she finds the item not up to his satisfaction.
As for discounts, we offer quite a few around the year, to commemorate specific events like Bhasha Dibosh, Pohela Boishakh, and the birth and death anniversaries of various writers.
The review section is also gaining popularity these days as you actually read what other people thought about the book.
About opportunities of online shopping in Bangladesh.
There is huge market potential for online shopping and e-commerce in Bangladesh. It’s only natural that a static object will initially require a lot of energy to gain momentum. E-commerce still requires that nourishment from it’s respective media’s popularising the idea as sought to be useful and promote worthy to gain momentum. However, after the initial stages repetitive orders do come from most of the customers and the business flows.
What are the biggest challenges of online business in Bangladesh? How do one need to prepare for starting one?
Creating awareness, I would say, is the biggest challenge. Then comes delivery on time. Though there are many online payment systems and positive government interventions, they are yet to gain people’s trust.
Where do you see rokomari.com 5 years from now?
The primary goal for us is totally satisfying all our customers. We are not high in number, nevertheless service excellence is of more value to us than a pool of dissatisfied customers.
What’s next for rokomari.com? Any plan for expansion?
We have recently enlisted music and other CD/DVD’s to our product list and we are interested in diversifying our catalogue. Rather than creating a need, we would like to stick to our theme of catering to needs. Perhaps burning needs like medical or agro- products might be our cup of tea. Nothings decided yet however.
Any favourite quote for our readers?
“Falling down is not defeat, defeat is when someone refuses to get up.” Chinese proverb.
What’s next in your career?
Working with education. Already we have initiated a program at a Mirpur 11 slum, where we help a local school there. With the vision of introducing alternative education, we eagerly provide logistic, idea and financial support to the schools.
