With the expansion of e-commerce in Pakistan, more warehousing is needed which opens up more opportunities for skilled and semi-skilled workers to manage the overall logistics and operations of the rising sector. But, we have to equip citizens with skills they need to compete in the global market.
This was stated by Nauman Sikandar Mirza, CEO foodpanda while talking exclusively with Pakistan Observer.
From 2015 to 2018 e-commerce increased its share of retail sales revenue consistently, from 14.4% in 2015 to 18% in 2018 and then more than 30% by 2021. People are moving away from brick and mortar retail to e-commerce because it saves them a lot of time.
To reach a wider audience, businesses list their stores on e-commerce websites so that they are not limited by the geographical area that can be serviced.
At foodpanda, we provide them training including rider safety training for e.g. in partnership with the traffic police, awareness sessions, grooming, I.T. skills, health insurance, discount on fuel through our arrangement with entities such as PSO, bonuses based on performance and still other benefits, including setting up camps for COVID-19 vaccination.
The gig economy is also tightly linked with e-commerce sector as a lot of jobs are being created in the form of freelancers who are opting to work as delivery riders, store managers, restaurant staff, and the likes on part time basis.
Therefore, it’s safe to say that e-commerce is serving to increase the overall economic activity and bringing in financial inclusion, economic empowerment and socioeconomic uplift of the country and foodpanda is at the forefront of it
foodpanda is providing self-employment income opportunities to thousands of home chefs and delivery riders to earn a successful living as and when they choose to. Thus if e-commerce sales continue to rise steadily, the business of vendors and suppliers to e-commerce platforms like pandamart will naturally also grow, he added.
In Pakistan today, there can be no better example of q-commerce than pandamart. Through pandamart, we have brought in the concept of dark stores, which effectively are huge, well-stocked hypermarkets if you like, but not open for physical shopping by customers. So customers order whatever they want online, using our app.
Through our chain of dark stories we are delivering a wide range of grocery items, food staples, household, electronics, cosmetics, and other products, within 20 minutes or less from the time the order has been placed and accepted.
We also launched a pilot project to test food delivery through a customized drone namely Pandafly. Customers living in peri-urban and remote areas will especially benefit from this as they have limited options of food outlets in their local area, and with drone delivery, they will be able to order food from main urban centres as well.
The last mile of delivery by drone will be completed by a foodpanda rider. Also to be noted is that this is the first of its kind commercial drone made in Pakistan in partnership with Woot Technology for this purpose and foodpanda is thus supporting development of local technology.
We are thus very positive about the future of e-commerce because of one fundamental truth – a service, any service, has strong growth potential if it is providing a much-needed solution, making life better and adding tangible value.
E-commerce is just one such service.Moreover, we have another offering for businesses known as Pandago which is a rider-on-demand service.
Our partners such as Dvago, Naheed Supermarket and Servaid are utilizing this service and reaching out to a larger set of customers by ensuring timely deliveries.
Therefore, we can say that e-commerce has revolutionized the retail sector and made it much more visible in the tech space.
So I would say that the future is all lit up for e-commerce as well as the retailers and we have only just begun.
With more than 50,000 riders now registered with us across Pakistan, we are making a significant contribution to the reduction of unemployment in the country, especially amongst the youth, Nauman Sikandar added.
