Shaheer Ahmed
Where Covid-19 wreaked havoc on Earth, there were some areas that developed due to the pandemic followed restrictions. One such area is e-commerce or in simple words online shopping. There is no one who’d say otherwise. This is true, while being restricted to the four walls of our house due to lockdown we were found doing all the shopping online. Even after the restrictions have eased up people still find online shopping easier and less straining. With that thought Markaz, an online reselling platform is taking Pakistan’s micro-enterprises to new heights.
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About Markaz
A platform that enables micro-entrepreneurs based on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook to sell wholesale products. The startup offers a platform to facilitate these entrepreneurs without any investment. The startup takes care of customer services, delivery, and payments. By 2030, Pakistan will become the 7th largest consumer market.
The startup aims at empowering more than 5M people, especially women to make a mark in the business world. It also aims at giving them the chance to work from home.
The boom in the eCommerce market due to Covid was not gone unnoticed by Markaz Technologies, and the four founders of the startup came up with the idea of taking the eCommerce market to new heights. Only recently, the startup raised $2.4M in a seed funding round.
Co-founder of Markaz Shoaib Khan said, “My a-ha moment was when my mother told me she had bought some sheets through the Whatsapp account of a woman she had known for more than 10 years.” Though eCommerce has become a trend in Pakistan, the quality and trust issues still make the customers hesitant.
Khan said “This parallel form of eCommerce through social media was growing fast but had a lot of inefficiencies like the consistency of product quality, delivery times and payments.” He further added “Now these resellers can source wholesale products from across the country and sell them at a profit through their own social media stores on Whatsapp and Facebook without investing anything in inventory.”
Markaz operationalized last year. Ever since it has been growing at an average rate of 65% a month. It already has around 25 suppliers and 2,000 resellers. Shoaib Khan said that the startup’s aim for the next 1 year is to add 300 more suppliers to the platform.
This innovative startup is surely going to further the eCommerce business in Pakistan. Moreover, a trusted and secured platform will help build customers trust in online shopping.
