Tech Talk: An online start-up brings fruit mandi to your door – Journal

Summers have arrived and the mango season is in full swing, but sometimes it means that local sellers are ripping you off, either in terms of price or quality. God forbid if you are not good at bargaining. Would not it be a lot easier to just buy online and get those boxes at home?

At least that's what MandiExpress wants you to do.

A startup based in Karachi, MandiExpress is an online fruit and vegetable seller that claims to offer high quality products at prices that are comparatively lower than those available in supermarkets.

It works as any other online seller. All you have to do is access the app / website, browse available products, place the order, have it delivered to your door and pay in cash, shipping included, R100 .

They have a just-in-time inventory system, which means that all orders received before midnight are aggregated. A team is then sent to the mandi to buy everything. customers.

Each day, the prices of the products vary according to the dynamics of the supply and the demand, as well as the quality available in the mandi, essentially as for any other market.

Although the name may suggest that they only sell fruits and vegetables, it is far from the truth.

Currently, the startup has up to 15 categories, ranging from pet care to meat and poultry.

And for now, they only operate in Karachi, but they plan to expand soon to Lahore and Islamabad.

The start-up's roots go back to Hawaii, where CEO Jehanzeb Chaudhri spent a few months as part of global opportunities in the field of organic farms.

"There, I basically learned permaculture and I was familiar with the methods of organic farming. After my return to Pakistan, I founded a home service business and a farm in my backyard. When that started, I turned to MandiExpress, "he recalls.

The company was then incubated at The Nest IO in the second batch and Danyaal Balkhi joined the group as Chief Operating Officer.

A quick look at the portal however shows that their products are generally more expensive than an average thellawala of the city, at least on this side of the Bosphorus Bridge in Karachi.

How can the start-up compete with local suppliers who have a clear price advantage and a presence at virtually every corner of the street?

"I do not really consider them a competition because of the obvious differences in our respective qualities, and often we also act as suppliers," said the CEO.

"Most of our DHA buyers are recurring, but this is not the case in places like Gulshan. There, customers tend to return to thellawala because of the prices. Jehanzeb added: "However, up to now, there was no significant price gap between top quality and other qualities." Try to develop a pricing model that better capture different segments. "

The startup has collected an undisclosed amount of seeds from Disrupt Ventures and is currently in talks for Series A to develop its operations.

Currently, most of the products posted on MandiExpress are unbranded, but Jehanzeb is trying to change that. "At the moment, only a few of our lists have farm names, but we would like to let even small farms tag their products and sell them through us," he says.

Even if they are very present in B2C, the start is not limited to the consumer market.

"We intervene on all fronts. the B2B segment where we provide a lot of local restaurants; we then have direct relations with the mashakhores (wholesalers and day traders who buy wholesale); In addition, we sell directly to local sellers, "says Chaudhri.

However, unlike other tech startups where good developers are usually the only expensive resource to hire, MandiExpress operates in a very capital-intensive sector: perishable products, internal logistics with its own fleet of rickshaws and pick-ups, with a team of more than 60 members.

How do they make money to pull all this?

"We charge a certain margin on every sale and have reinvested the profits to expand organically, in addition to the seed money we have raised," said Chaudhri.

Turning to the digital arena, the startup is not totally immune to competition.

Online retailers such as SubziPhal or even HumMart have tried to take a share, the latter likely enjoying good financial support. But Jehanzeb is here to bet his stakes. That the industry is ripe to eat its fruits can only be resolved with time.

The author is a staff member:
[email protected]
Twitter: @MutaherKhan

Posted in Dawn, July 7, 2019