E-Cab celebrates E-Commerce Day on April 7 every year with the slogan ‘Safe at home, future in e-commerce’. The country’s e-commerce sector has gained huge momentum due to ongoing lockdown to stop the spread of the pandemic.
In the first two days, sales of daily necessities have tripled in Bangladesh’s first rural-assisted e-commerce platform, EkShop, an initiative of a2i.
In addition, the first open agricultural product platform in Bangladesh ‘Food for Nation’ has gained momentum in the market price chain. While the average daily buyer was 1,300; the number of wholesale buyers has doubled during this period. The daily hits of registered buyers have increased to two and a half thousand to three thousand.
The platform has a group of 7,300 farmers. Collecting daily commodities from these farmers through ‘Food for Nation’, they are going to the homes of the customers through EkShop on behalf of the wholesalers.
State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak on Tuesday held a meeting with stakeholders to ensure fair prices for farmers besides maintaining market discipline.
About the meeting, the minister said the initiative, which started in April last year, has already involved about 7,000 small farmers, agri-entrepreneurs and countless agri-supply chain buyers.
The ICT Department’s Rural E-Commerce Initiative, Ekshop, has also added them to the Food for Nation platform as a forwarding channel for the best e-commerce platforms in the country. So far, more than Tk 4.5 crore worth of agricultural and agricultural products have been marketed on the Food for Nation platform with the help of EkShop.
Md. Rezwanul Haque Jami, team leader of EkShop, who participated in the meeting, told DiGiBangla that the orders in Ekshop have increased by calling 333. For the last two days, more people have been calling this number to get daily necessities at home. About 45 percent of these advance orders are coming from the port city of Chattagram. In normal times, it is 10 percent of the total demand, but in the last two days, 90 percent of the demands have been occupied by daily commodities.
According to him, 98 percent of the deliveries in EkShop are done outside Dhaka. After Chattagram, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Khulna and Jashore are ahead in this regard.
The shop so far has 9,600 agents and 5,600 delivery persons, most of whom are students. According to the SOP, they are the ones who deliver the products as per the demand at the doorsteps of the customers.
