Oclick grocery store Wants To Become The Amazon Fresh Of Bangladesh’s Capital

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  • Author Nil Ahamed
  • Published November 9, 2020
  • Word count 760

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is one among the densest cities within the world. Since land is at a premium, stores are often tiny and carry very limited inventory. Oclick’s goal is to offer customers the experience of shopping during a big-box store with an enormous selection.

Backed by Y Combinator and 500 Startups, Oclick currently stocks over 4,000 products in its two warehouses, which it delivers in about an hour, and hopes to become the “Amazon Fresh of Dhaka.”

The company, which is currently averaging about 150 deliveries each day , plans to feature a minimum of six more warehouses to hide all of Dhaka before potentially expanding into other Bangladeshi cities.

Oclick was founded by Waseem Alim, Tejas Viswanath, and Zia Ashraf in 2013. After working in development for Wikinvest and SigFig, Alim began exploring the likelihood of launching a startup in his home country. He was galvanized by the collapse of a garment factory near Dhaka that killed quite 1,100 workers.

“That jarred me and made me think, if capital is being invested during a way where people need to work inside a mousetrap, then i would like to ascertain what it takes to actually make a living in Bangladesh,” he says.

Consumers in Dhaka often purchase small amounts of groceries, no matter their income level, because shops don’t have tons of stock. Oclick’s current business model centers around warehouses that are relatively small (about 5,000 to 7,000 square feet each), but still enable it to hold far more items than brick-and-mortar retailers. It uses a cloud-based inventory system that permits users to ascertain what items are available in real-time.

Oclick’s At first, Oclick tried a model almost like hyperlocal grocery startups in India like Grofers and PepperTap, which meant learning items from local stores rather than carrying its own stock. the shortage of control over inventory, however, turned off customers.

“If someone orders two liters of Coke and therefore the store only has one liter, there's no way for you to inform the customer that,” says Alim. “We found tons of consumers didn't come .”

Oclick switched to its current model in March. Since many purchasers order ingredients for meals right before they begin cooking, Oclick also began providing on-demand delivery.

“When we started this service back in November 2013, we were doing next-day delivery which just doesn’t cut it for people,” says Alim.

“When you would like something, you would like it really fast, and therefore the culture within the subcontinent is to urge a really small inventory of cooking supplies, unlike within the U.S. where you purchase bulk items sort of a ton of loo paper. most of the people don’t have cars and you only go and buy four eggs, literally, not even a dozen eggs.”

Unlike Instacart within the U.S., Odoesn’t charge a premium for convenience. Instead, it competes with brick-and-mortar stores by buying directly from wholesalers and offering lower prices.

Grocery margins are too slim to support huge discounts, but most of Oclick’s prices are about 1 to 2 percent less than other stores and it plans to extend that to five percent because it scales up to woo customers.

“Instacart charges you additional because they're competing with huge retail infrastructure like Wal-mart, but we expect we will improve the infrastructure and deliver at a lower cost ,” says Alim.

Oclick’s hottest categories include pet food, since many animal owners usually need to travel out of their neighborhoods to specialty stores, and baby supplies ordered by busy new parents.

In addition to traditional retailers, Oclick’s competitors include Direct Fresh and Meenabazaar. Direct Fresh, however, sells organic produce and other premium food, while Meenabazaar is travel by a grocery chain.

Alim believes Chaldal will proportion more quickly than other online grocery sellers by keeping its warehouses small and strategically placed throughout Dhaka to succeed in as many consumers as possible. the corporate is currently ready to provide about 8 to 10 percent of Dhaka’s residents with one-hour deliveries, but hopes to hide the whole city by the top of this year.

“Once we actually understand Dhaka, the opposite cities are going to be fairly easy,” says Alim. “The market here is already very big, so we don’t got to expand to other cities so as to urge bigger challenges. In Dhaka, groceries are probably a $4 to $5 billion market per annum , so if we offer cheaper prices, more variety, and better quality, there's no reason why we shouldn’t be one among the most important retailers within the city, if not the most important .”

“Once we actually understand Dhaka, the opposite cities are going to be fairly easy,” says Alim. “The market here is already very big, so we don’t got to expand to other cities so as to urge bigger challenges. In Dhaka, groceries are probably a $4 to $5 billion market per annum , so if we offer cheaper prices, more variety, and better quality, there's no reason why we shouldn’t be one among the most important retailers within the city, if not the most important .”

Article source: https://articlebiz.com
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