TOP 5 CHALLENGES F-COMMERCE ENTREPRENEURS CURRENTLY FACE IN BANGLADESH


At this very beginning of the new decade, it can be easily said that Facebook commerce or f-commerce has made a deep impact on the purchasing behavior of Bangladeshi consumers. 

According to the E-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-cab), there are more than 8,000 Facebook-based businesses all over the country. Today in Bangladesh, from multinational to a single person e-commerce business can't even imagine their operation without a Facebook page. These f-commerce businesses are delivering thousands of orders, even to the remote areas of the country. 

However, the journey till now for the f-commerce entrepreneurs was not “Bed of roses”. They have come a long way, but even today they are facing several challenges. Let's check out, what are the top 5 challenges of these f-commerce entrepreneurs are facing currently in Bangladesh.

[1] Investment: 

Like any other start-up, investment is the biggest issue for f-commerce businesses. Almost all f-commerce entrepreneurs don't maintain solid records of their everyday transactions. They just calculate their overall monthly profit, by subtracting the purchase price from the buying or manufacturing cost. 

Lack of proper bookkeeping makes it quite difficult for banks or any other investors to understand the business in-depth. Besides, this issue, banks & other traditional financing companies generally don't trust virtual businesses for some misconceptions & lack of knowledge about these types of businesses. 

In this condition, Shop-Up is doing something appreciable, they have started a loan facility for these entrepreneurs. Though only Shop-Up is not enough in this huge field, it's nice to see that someone is trying to make a difference.


[2] Lack of customer retention: 

Most of the f-commerce businesses are not aware of customer retention. The majority of them just try to “boost” their page or product using Facebook promotion and get some sales. For this tendency, they have very few recurring customer base. I have found many consumers, who are satisfied with the product & service of a specific Facebook page, but they can't remember the name of the page, even to reorder the same product. 

This also hurt many f-commerce entrepreneurs last year, when Facebook brought some changes in the news feed algorithm. 

[3] Payment issue: As f-commerce businesses don't have their own website in most cases, they have to rely mainly on Cash On Delivery (COD) & Mobile Financial Services (MFS) for payment. 

A good number of f-commerce businesses complain about receiving late payment of Cash On Delivery (COD) payments from the logistics service provider. Besides COD, Mobile Financial Services are the secondary payment channel, but here comes another issue, the verification process for the merchant account is relatively long & sometimes tiring also. 

Moreover, major MFS providers don't get interested to enlist any business as their merchant, most cases they lose their interest if the monthly transactions over the MFS channel are lower than 4-5 lacs BDT per month.


[4] Delivery to remote areas: Though some logistics like E-Courier, Pathao, Paperfly, etc. are trying their best to ensure last-mile delivery to every corner of the country, it is not yet a reality to deliver any type of product to anywhere in Bangladesh within a minimum cost. Some products like furniture, electronics, automobiles take the huge cost to deliver, even sometimes the delivery cost could be almost 50% of the cost of the product itself.

[5] Fraudulent Order: A comment or message is enough for placing an order at f-commerce, naturally the rate of fraudulent orders are relatively higher than the mainstream e-commerce. There is no single word remedy for this challenge, entrepreneurs can verify the customer in several ways to keep the number of fraudulent orders at a minimum level.

Before starting any f-commerce business, you should consider all the measures on how you can face the challenges above!

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