Despite the huge growth in internet penetration in Bangladesh over the past decades, approximately 4 to 5 million small retailers (dokandar) holds more than 98% of all Bangladesh retail  and trade market, which directly connect 180+ million population of Bangladesh.

In the decades-old traditional systems, every week, these retailers buy 35% of their shop essentials: talking to 50-60  different single branded salespeople for placing orders. For the rest of the 65 % of their shop essentials: they need to close their shop and invest time in traveling to the wholesale market, negotiate, buy, and then manage logistics to bring products to their shops. Otherwise, they need to buy from the brokers, who provide them this service, with an undisclosed premium of   20-50%.

chowkbazar.com, an online wholesale marketplace for small retailers, launches in Dhaka with an ambition to solve these problems for small retailers. Small retailers can buy all of their business goods from chowkbazar.com without leaving their shops.

Likewise traditional wholesale market, a small shop owner can search for his desired products, price, quantity with different brands and sellers, even he can find the prices of a single product offered by many different sellers, which ultimately give him a scope to buy the best product with least possible wholesale price in Bangladesh.

Normally the majority of the small shop owners aren’t tech-savvy. To make them comfortable with the online buying phenomenon as well as placing orders on regular basis, chowkbazar.com has route-wise dedicated sales executives who visit the small retailers weekly to check their stocks and help them place orders. Once you place an order, it is then forwarded to the sellers, Chowkbazar’s delivery person then picks up the package from sellers and delivers it to the small shop owners. From placing an order to delivery, the whole process takes 6-48 hours.  

The most important benefit the small retailers getting from chowkbazar.com is that: they can directly purchase the products from the manufacturers, importers, which eliminate the middleman i.e dealer, distributor, brokers, etc. and can save 5-50% of their procurement cost.

To avail, chowkbazar.com charges a delivery fee of 0-10 taka (depending on products) per kilogram as a delivery cost, which is the current main revenue stream of chowkbazar.com.

Currently, chowkbazar.com is available only in Dhaka and covers mobile phone, mobile accessories, electrical, lighting, hand tools and a number of verticals. The company, however, gradually plans to get into medicine and grocery as well as expand its services across the country.