Although the COVID-19 pandemic threatened to halt the impressive growth trajectory of the Bangladeshi economy, a rejuvenated retail industry helped protect the momentum. The retail industry of our country makes up 60.80% of all financial transactions in 2021.[1] According to the Financial Express, retail makes up 12% of our national employment.[2]
Despite these impressive numbers, this important sector has not seen much growth for over two decades. Analysts point to the fragmented nature of traditional supply chain and logistics as the key reason behind this stagnancy. The inherent inefficiencies of the old model lead to higher costs and the pandemic made things even worse, with the added challenges of movement restrictions and supply shortages.
To tackle these issues, ShopUp, Bangladesh’s largest B2B commerce platform, relies on digitizing retail business, so the trader can focus on the core task of catering to customers and closing sales. In the traditional model, higher costs are incurred in moving the product from producer to end consumer. ShopUp removes the layers and uses a common delivery channel to bring down costs and ultimately enable higher profits for traders.
Emdad bhai, a Dhaka resident, had lost his job soon after the pandemic hit. He didn’t know what to do or where to go to support his family. His wife sold her gold jewelry to raise some money for the family. Investing that little money as capital, Emdad bhai opened up a small grocery store. In the early days he struggled a lot with sourcing products, incurring losses due to the time and cost involved in physically visiting different markets and transferring goods to his store. Eventually, he started using Mokam — a B2B commerce platform from ShopUp. Mokam made his life easy by making 10,000+ products available in a simple smartphone app. REDX — the last-mile logistics service from ShopUp, ensures fast supply of the goods ordered with countrywide footprint. Already the market leader in last-mile logistics, REDX ensures Mokam can serve retailers all across the country.
Apart from supply chain and logistics, ShopUp is also playing an interesting role in solving another key challenge faced by retailers: access to financing. Baki, a digital embedded credit product from ShopUp, simply offers products on credit. This way, traders can easily acquire more supplies without needing to secure additional capital.
With these tech-enabled services, ShopUp is revolutionizing the retail scene, enabling it to grow at a blistering pace.
