Aarlaki aims to fill the e-Commerce void outside the valley

In the last few years, e-Commerce has certainly come into the limelight. Today there are dozens of e-Commerce sites in Nepal, which sell different types of products such as electronic items, clothes, fashion accessories, grocery items and more. With their easy to access facility and user-friendly nature, e-Commerce sites have undoubtedly been able to gain the trust of clients. But, one of the biggest limitation is that most of these websites are based on Kathmandu and is available for customers inside the valley, which deprives the people from outside the valley from being able to make use of them.

Aarlaki.com is one of the newest e-Commerce sites that has tried to overcome this limitation. Launched on 13th April 2016 (1st Baisakh 2073), Aarlaki.com is an e-commerce site based on Waling, Syangja. By the way, its unique name Aarlaki means “to sell” in Magar language.

At present, they are concentrating on women and men apparels and accessories (electronics as well). Genuine products of many popular brands such as of Spykar, Michael Kors, Nakkashi, Norita, Tanvi Designers, Mahotsav, Casio, Hirawat, Maxzone, Modernism, Apple, Samsung, SanDisk, and Sony are available on the site. Besides that, you can also find high copy products of brands like H&M, Adidas, Nike, Calvin Klein, Abercrombie & Fitch, Zara. They deliver their products to almost all parts of Nepal since they want to ensure that people from every corner of the Nepal can enjoy shopping online. And did we mention that the shipping is free all over Nepal?

(Co-founders. Left to Right: Sagar Rana, Deepesh Ale, Gayatri Saru, Pavitra Ale)

According to Sagar Rana, one of the Co-founders of Aarlaki.com, the future of online shopping is brilliant as more and more people are into it. Particularly, e-Commerce is changing itself to m-Commerce since most people are using mobile phones. It is easy for them to shop online from the ease of their cell phones by using Apps and Mobile version of the shopping website.

But, as it is with any new venture, there are issues of course. The team is currently struggling to convince vendors to put their products for sell on their site. In addition to that, the problem of fake orders is also one of their biggest hurdles.

Anyway, their motto is to grow Aarlaki into a huge marketplace where vendors from all the cities of Nepal can sell their products domestically and internationally. According to them, their primary focus is on the quality and they want to deal with only the best quality products with the best reasonable price.

My take on Aarlaki

In my opinion, though the idea seems good, we cannot deny the fact that there are still some rooms for improvement. For one, the team needs to work on the site since there are many small but not-so-ignorable design issues. In addition to that, they need to come up with a proper marketing strategy to compete with other e-commerce businesses, as there are many other well-established e-commerce sites available in Nepal, with a similar goal. The fact that Aarlaki.com is based outside the valley is a big plus point for the team, that is, if they can adequately address the clients in local areas, particularly western region. But, that again depends upon whether the team has done proper market research to understand the internet penetration as well as the customer need in those areas.