With over 3 million products sourced from over 50,000 Sri Lankan suppliers each month, Daraz is the largest e-commerce company in Sri Lanka. While the Covid-19 pandemic has helped unlock some growth, Daraz Sri Lanka’s Managing Director Rakhil Fernando believes a lot more needs to be done to unleash the country’s e-commerce potential. One way to do this is to contribute towards equitable growth, and as a result, Daraz Cares was conceived. Fernando has already overseen a tripling of orders by Sri Lankan consumers in the financial year that ended in April 2020. He aims to lead the business to much greater heights by 2022. However, with Daraz Cares, he wants to fulfil a broader purpose. In this interview, Fernando discusses the reason for Daraz’s existence: to uplift communities by empowering sellers and buyers and how Daraz Cares assist in taking that approach to a whole new level.

The benefits of e-commerce to communities have been particularly revealing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Can you tell us how the pandemic has affected Daraz?

We experienced a steep 95% increase in fulfilment volumes over the past few months or so when demand rocketed for FMCG, groceries, and general merchandise on our local marketplace, especially after launching our online groceries store dMart.

When an e-commerce company grows that fast over a short period, fulfilling orders on time as per the declared service agreements can be challenging even in the best of times. However, at Daraz, we fulfilled around 99% of orders under the promised delivery time despite the increasing demand. In addition, the number of daily active users on Daraz.lk has massively increased over the past six months, mainly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, the average number of daily users visiting our app for the first time is significantly higher than what it used to be in January 2021, leading to higher volumes of buyers sourcing from our marketplace of Sri Lankan sellers.

Can you tell us how Daraz’s business model positively impacts the community – helping consumers get what they need and keeping suppliers and delivery jobs going even during these challenging times?

The primary thing that affects the community is that Sri Lankan businesses can keep selling, and Sri Lankan consumers can fulfil their needs. Some consumers have a misconception about how Daraz works. They assume we are making all the sales on the platform, but that is not the case. Third-party local vendors generate the vast majority of the sales on Daraz, and for this reason, our business model inherently performs a social good. What Daraz essentially does is to help local businesses stay operational, sell their products, keep people employed, and provide food and essentials to households even during a crisis like the ongoing pandemic when physical shopping is not a feasible option. We worked exceptionally hard to ensure that our team and local sellers stayed operational and safe during the lockdowns, which is one of the key reasons for our success. Around 6000-7,000 third-party Sri Lankan vendors make a sale via Daraz daily. Our ability to connect sellers with buyers and fulfil orders on time, especially during challenging times, while securing the livelihoods of our employees, testifies to the positive social impact Daraz is making. We have also increased our team over the past few months to over 1,600 employees.

Giving back to the community is inherent in your business model (as discussed above), but can you tell us how you have gone beyond this? For instance, can you tell us about Daraz Cares and your ‘School from Home’ campaign?

We launched Daraz Cares in the aftermath of the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, and fundraising initiatives took off after the Covid-19 outbreak. We raised money for selected charities and supported over 600 families during the pandemic. In June 2021, we launched Daraz Care’s Igenumata Athwelak initiative to make online education available to underprivileged children. Throughout the pandemic, education moved from a physical classroom to an online setting. Unfortunately, this transition disproportionately affected low-income families and rural communities in Sri Lanka who don’t have easy access to the bare essentials to carry out online learning. This has resulted in many children missing out on their education. We aim to provide smartphones and tablets and readily accessible printers to schools and children in rural areas and low-income households so that they can effectively engage in remote learning and not get left behind. Our mission for the Daraz Cares Igenumata Athwelak campaign in collaboration with LEADS Sri Lanka is to bridge that gap between poverty and online learning making education accessible to all children.

Daraz Cares serves a broader, more profound purpose. It fulfils our reason for existence which is to uplift communities by empowering sellers and buyers alike

Can you tell us more about Daraz Cares and the impact it is having on the community?

As a leading e-commerce company in the Southeast Asia region, we are committed to our communities wherever we are. Daraz Cares connects consumers with charities making a significant impact in Sri Lanka like UNICEF, Sri Lanka Red Cross Society, Habitat for Humanity Sri Lanka, The Sunshine Charity, Tails of Freedom, and LEADS Sri Lanka. So far, Daraz has collected over 16,000 donations totalling in the millions since launching. Apart from these charities, we continue to actively support the government during the Covid-19 pandemic, donating medical equipment, testing kits, filling gaps in education, and providing essential items for hygiene in rural areas.

We genuinely believe that access to equal opportunities, education and skills will reduce inequalities and lead to decent work opportunities and economic growth in desirable communities. While the Igenumata Athwelak focuses on empowering rural school kids, we at Daraz are working on several other initiatives targeting the broader economy and looking at the longer-term benefits to the community.

For instance, we will pilot a digital learning program call “Daraz Skill Up”, offering foundational courses and diplomas in subjects that will help individuals thrive in the e-commerce industry, like ICT, digital marketing, SQL coding, and other essential business skills. We will launch this for our operational staff and then roll it out to the rest of the country in collaboration with our Daraz Cares partners and eventually to other parts of the South Asian region.

These initiatives not only fulfil a social good, but they also make sound business sense. While supporting the needs of local communities as a part of our overall business strategy, the focus on Education for All will equip people from disadvantaged communities to improve their technical skills and careers. Our efforts to support local communities and employees will go beyond education. We also want to help them create new job opportunities that can uplift their future.

While we do have traditional CSR projects, Daraz Cares serves a broader, more profound purpose. It fulfils our reason for existence which is to uplift communities by empowering sellers and buyers alike because we passionately believe that e-commerce can and will benefit everyone in Sri Lanka.