Collaboration can help create new opportunities. In that spirit, Telenor Pakistan and leading e-tailer Daraz.pk joined hands earlier this week to convert traditional consumers into online shoppers. The partnership is an acceptance of the brick and click model: offer e-commerce access to the public via Telenor Pakistan's existing network of "Easy Shops".
Using those shops, folks will be able to go online to Daraz's marketplace, browse what they like, order online, pay at the premises, and later receive the shipment at their designated address. Some 20 such shops will be opened in the pilot phase, mostly in major cities like Karachi and Lahore. Later, the two companies plan to expand the e-commerce access to all 550 of the existing Easy Shops.
This is an exercise in business development for both the firms, creating a new opening for sales. But there are reasons why this column picked up on this development, which seems inspired by Alibaba's "Rural Taobao" project. More on that later...
In urban areas, these shops can potentially help on-board people who are unaware or wary of the e-commerce channel. There will be quite a bit of handholding for walk-ins, as the joint press released noted:
"Telenor Easy Shops will have marketing material (like posters and flyers) of the running products available over the counter that users can go through while shop agent would be there to facilitate customer in browsing and ordering products on customers behalf from his machine."
Utility of this offering could be greater in rural areas. Rural dwellers usually have limited or negligible Internet connectivity. They transact in cash, as the plastic money infrastructure is almost non-existent. Many households might not even be aware of e-commerce. Even those who are aware would be frustrated to find limited technical means to transact online.
Overcoming those odds, these shops can help create more consumer demand in rural areas. Remote areas may not have fancy shopping malls or department stores but aspirations are found in abundant supply there. Daraz has previously reported more than half of their orders coming not from major cities like Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, but from smaller towns in interior Sindh and Punjab.
In China, boosting e-commerce in rural areas is part of Alibabas growth strategy. The e-commerce giant is reportedly aiming to transform 600 million Chinese rural dwellers into online shoppers. It plans to open about 100,000 rural service centres, where villagers can walk in to a kiosk and order anything online from a bag of fertilizer to a television. Sensing that e-commerce can aid in its quest to raise living standards in rural areas, the Chinese government has reportedly been subsidising this corporate project.
It is conceded that there may not be much socioeconomic to read into this partnership between Daraz and Telenor. But it offers a glimpse of what can be, if more collaboration occurred. Right now, it is hard to imagine a villager in some remote Punjab farmland operating his or her own online storefront selling fresh fruit. But who knows such a prospect may be just an entrepreneurial collaboration away.
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