Pakistan’s leading e-commerce platform, Daraz, hosted its annual Seller Summit on Sunday, with over 100,000 sellers from around the country attending the virtual event.
Addressing the summit, Daraz CEO Bjarke Mikkelsen said that the past 12 months have been challenging for everyone, but despite the impact of COVID-19, he believes that the e-commerce platform is in its strongest position yet for sellers to scale their businesses.
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“I want to thank both the Pakistan government and our sellers for helping to advance the operating environment for the Daraz platform over the past 12 months. We have been working hand-in-hand with the government to ensure that there is both a legislative and taxation framework that will allow the e-commerce industry to flourish.
“At the same time, our sellers have collectively taken on the challenge to enhance the customer experience and build greater trust on the platform by improving product quality, service and their overall interaction with customers.”
Talking about the seller experience, Mr Mikkelsen added, “In the next 12 months, we will work to improve the seller experience further, and this will see us focus on three key areas. The first initiative will focus on making seller statements more transparent and payments faster. Secondly, we will put a greater emphasis on providing access to tools that will allow sellers to scale their business, and finally, we want to improve the returns process to ensure no unnecessary cost-burden is carried by the seller.” 
As the growth and sophistication of the e-commerce landscape in Pakistan continues to evolve, Daraz announced several other initiatives to enhance the seller experience after already reducing the payment cycle from 14 to 7 days earlier in the year. These include an improved quality control process, speeding up the sign-up process, enhancements to Daraz University and establishing a Seller Community platform.
Additionally, Abdul Raza Dawood, adviser to prime minister for Commerce and Investment, also joined and appreciated Daraz for the efforts it has made to grow the eCommerce industry of Pakistan and assured that government will continue its support for the platform.
Head of Alibaba.com APAC, Stephen Kuoc, also spoke at the summit about Alibaba’s B2B performance.
“Based on our latest forecast, our B2B online business will grow by up to 20% in Pakistan, and this opens up a huge market for exporters.
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“Recently exports in Pakistan have gone up to 339 billion PKR making Pakistan one of our most important markets. Our platform connects buyers and sellers from more than 100 countries globally, and together with Daraz, we want to provide full local support to businesses to allow them to shift seamlessly online.”
With the summit over, sellers now turn their attention to 11.11 – Pakistan’s biggest online shopping sale.
