The Pakistani business-to-business website, TradeKey, which is ranked 3rd largest business-to-business website in the world, is facilitating over $100 million import/export transactions every month through its website. Having its presence in Pakistan with over 400 employees, TradeKey has its offices in Pakistan, Saudia Arab and China with over 500 employees and 5.8 million customers in 220 countries.
CEO TradeKey Junaid Mansoor talking to Business Recorder here on Thursday claimed: "We are Pakistan's first and only business-to-business website and we have our major clientele in US and China. Over US $100 million buying and selling that takes place at our website is mainly from US, China and Europe." The company facilitates importers and exporters world-wide by providing them with the opportunity to interact with the businesses of their interest around the world through its website. "We are representing Pakistan in over 220 countries world over", he said.
TradeKey is planning to forge partnerships with Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP), Small and Medium Business Development Authority (SMEDA) and Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) to promote Pakistani products world-wide and also to facilitate Pakistani exporters in exploring multi-billion dollar trade opportunities through internet.
World over the online trade business is touching the mark of $5 trillion but Pakistan doesn't have any substantial share in this online trade. Internet is the future of Pakistani economy and if we utilise the full potential of opportunities available on the internet, country could easily accelerate its exports many fold in near future. Currently, TradeKey has 140,000 users in Pakistan, which is very less compared to its world-wide consumer base of 5.5 million active users, he said.
Junaid said that TradeKey.com was established in 2005 with the aim to facilitate global trade and bring buyers and sellers from all around the world to one common platform. "We have succeeded in our dream in a way that we have become third largest business to business website in the world within 6 years and we were also declared as one of the fastest 500 growing companies of Asia in a competition held by AllWorld Network organised by Harvard University," he proudly said.
He continued to say: "We have limited consumers in Pakistan, because Pakistani customers are not tuned to pay for internet-based services as yet and there are so many people who are still not using the computers and internet to expand their businesses. For basic services we offer our services free of cost to Pakistanis in order to help them promote their products internationally. We only charge them if they ask for extensive services."
In order to provide Pakistani women entrepreneurs an opportunity to explore the potential of internet-based business, TradeKey has recently announced to launch Women E-Business Incubation Center, to create partnership with Pakistani women. Through this initiative, it will provide a platform to women for all their unique and innovative ideas with support in areas like product development, marketing and finance. This way, women could leverage through the state-of-the-art infrastructure of the company.
He further said that the company wants to support and promote women who have ideas and are committed to excellence in the field of e-business. This initiative would make women's dream come true by developing and growing their own Internet-based businesses with the flexibility of working from anywhere and anytime and allow them to fulfil their family responsibilities while building their careers and fulfilling financial needs at the same time. This facilitation by TradeKey is second in a row in addition to work from home facility provided to women workers in developing countries.
Junaid said that promotion of our locally produced products through internet world over has not yet gained momentum for Pakistani manufacturers and exporters but we are working on new Pakistan-specific products and we are hopeful that we would be able to attract a large number of Pakistani businesses and exporters to use the strength of Internet to enhance their businesses. He said the world has become a global village in a true sense. "We have customers sitting in far flung areas from china to US and they know each other through our facilitation services like they are doing business in their own cities."
TradeKey has a capital investment of $20 million. Over 9.5 million visitors visit its website with over 32 million page views every month. So far over 1 billion visitors have visited our website in last 6 years. At our website there are 36,000 categories of industries in which we have products by sellers for buyers.
As a business model, TradeKey doesn't charge to its importers. It only charges to the exporters who get the chance to sell their products world-wide. More than 1 billion people have visited our website and visitors mainly from China, US, Turkey, Taiwan are very active on our website, he said.
The company helps small businesses convert into global enterprises by providing them a state of the art online and by using the platform they could market their products internationally, find genuine buyers, satisfy their buying needs and explore regional and international business opportunities.
The CEO claimed that TradeKey.com is the first B2B marketplace that got Google Page Rank 8 and it's also the world's first B2B marketplace that earned ISO 9001 Quality Management System and ISO 27001 Information Security System certifications to ensure maximum customer satisfaction, security and safe online trading.
TradeKey, he said believes that there are unlimited opportunities to grow in the e-business industry not only for the company itself, but for the employees also as they grow with the expansion of the business. As e-business, specifically B2B, is in an emerging phase, there has been scarcity of resources that have experience, knowledge and skills to play a pivotal role in the development of this industry. To address this challenge, the company has designed and implemented unique and unconventional strategy and performance management system known as the Grow Unlimited Program (GUP).
The GUP identifies, appraises, recognises and develops performance of its employees in order to meet business objectives. Unlike other conventional performance management systems, GUP gives growth of employees in their own hands and they could choose the pace of their own career development.
This is achieved by pre-defined performance criteria and promotions based on performance. This programme handles the promotions of employees through a pointing system. Employees earn points every quarter based on their performance and as soon as an employee accumulates certain level of points, he becomes eligible for a promotion, he said.
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