KARACHI
Yayvo.com is a leading name in Pakistan’s e-commerce industry. Backed by TCS, Pakistan’s most recognized courier, and logistics company, Yayvo has created a stronghold on the market in just a year. Recently the e-commerce industry had its first local shopping event “Shopping Day” which was executed a week before Ramzan. We had a chance to talk to the Head of Yayvo.com Adam Dawood.
What is the Shopping Day and what is the vision behind it?
The Shopping Day event was built with the vision of creating Pakistan’s first unique online shopping event – an event that aims for digital inclusion of brands and consumers alike.
The aim of Shopping Day was to induce industry growth by initiating Pakistan’s very own culturally relevant shopping event. There is a dire need for online shopping events to attract new shoppers.
Furthermore, events that are strategically based around local cultural festivals have a greater likelihood of being successful. Currently, the biggest online shopping event for Pakistani audience is ‘Black Friday’ which is borrowed from American culture.
The event is also aimed towards digital inclusion, which requires bringing all the eCommerce stakeholders together.
How and why was this particular event created?
Despite being a nation of shopaholics, Pakistanis still lack an event that they can call their own.
The Shopping Day is where we want customers to shop around at a time when they actually care about shopping. An ideal time for the event hence is a week before Ramzan. In Ramzan, customers usually face major price hikes and an overcrowded market.
Are you planning to have this event every year?
Yes, we plan to have Shopping Day every year a week before Ramzan.
Any more events in the future?
Most definitely. Our goal is to collaborate with the world eCommerce market as much as possible.
How did Yayvo bring the e-commerce industry together?
Yayvo managed to hold 3 to 4 major events in its short one-year time span and gave an opportunity to the industry to come together and make a bigger impact with digital inclusion.
Our main focus was to encourage e-commerce players to host the event a week before Ramzan simultaneously between May 19 and 22. It was optional for them to call it Shopping Day and use the logo that Yayvo had created and customized it accordingly.
When you say e-commerce industry, what sectors are you targeting?
The first major sector targeted for the Shopping Day was the marketplace. These e-commerce stores basically sell every single category of products. The next targets were the on-demand ones like Careem and Uber and takeaway services like Food Panda and, subsequently, we tried to bring in as many sellers as we could. After the Shopping Day campaign was announced, several other small and big e-commerce players reached out to us.
The “IsMay” campaign had a great response. Tell us about it.
The IsMay campaign by Yayvo was a strategy to promote and announce the Shopping Day festival. The campaign had an element of mystery in it which engendered curiosity. IsMay was a unique and cost-effective campaign. It successfully created hype for the Shopping Day, in turn promoting the e-commerce industry.
Tell us more about the payment methods and the payment partners you have on board
Even though Cash-on-Delivery (COD) payment methods continue to be widely popular in Pakistan with more than 90 per cent of online purchases, we wanted to initiate something different. With Shopping Day, the target was to bring on board as many payment partners and banks as possible. Five banks participated including JS Bank, Meezan Bank, UBL, MCB and Silk Bank, along with EasyPay and JazzCash. The goal for these events is to push pre-payments with discounts and reduce the overall cash-on-delivery rate.
