Pandemic prompts Sarojini and Sadar to go digital

When capital’s Sarojini Nagar market opened after lockdown last year in May, shopkeepers, including Vandit Chawla’s father, who runs a footwear shop there saw their sales drop like never before due to low footfalls. He and his sister, Medha Chawla decided to launch an Instagram page in September where they began showcasing products from various shops in the market – mostly garments and shoes --with price tags. They were pleasantly surprised by the traction the page got. It began to add followers by the hundreds every day, many of whom began to place orders there. Six months on, the page has over 44,000 followers from across India and adds about 1,100 followers every day. “We got about 1,000 product queries every day,” says Vandit Chawla.

Encouraged by the growing popularity of the page, earlier this month the duo launched Sarojini Nagar Market Online, an e-commerce platform, which ships clothes from the popular flea market to all over India.

“We handpick products in bulk from the shopkeepers in Sarojini Nagar and sell them on our platform. We are in the process of listing all shopkeepers with their shop number and description online so that people can buy from their favourite shop virtually,” says Vandit Chawla, adding that “We are already working with about 100 sellers in the market.”

He calls the platform ‘a pandemic bay’.

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In fact, Sarojini Nagar is not the only market to have gone online during the pandemic. A year after the lockdown, digital is the new buzzword in some of the oldest and most popular markets in Delhi, with some now boasting their own dedicated e-commerce platforms such as ‘Sadar 24’ with a catchphrase ‘Har Ghar Sadar, Har Deal Gadar’ and The Wholesalers, another e-commerce platform with a catchphrase ‘Khari Baoli at your doorstep’.

Nitin Goel and Sonal Garg, who launched Sadar 24 last month, say they realized that there was room for an e-commerce marketplace for Sadar Bazar when last year traders desperately started putting photos of their products on various WhatsApp groups, Facebook and Instagram pages to attract business online as they waited for the market to reopen.

So, when the market finally opened in June last year, having remained closed for the longest period in the city, they conducted a survey to understand the logistics and what local traders thought about the idea. “About 500 traders signed up in a week,” he says. “Our catchphrase represents the importance Sadar Bazar has in millions of homes in the capital. Every house in Delhi has something from this market. We thought a dedicated e-commerce portal will not only provide an avenue for unhindered sales during the pandemic but also carry forward the market’s legacy,” says Nitin Goel.

The platform handles the shipping for its 750 sellers currently on its platform.

Among the traders who signed up on the platform is Sumit Jain, a wholesale dealer of kitchenware and home décor in Sadar Bazar. “Unlike big online marketplaces, here I do not have to compete with lakhs of sellers,” he says. “I have listed about 200 products on Sadar 24; kitchenware and lunch boxes are currently the fast-selling items,” says Jain who runs Sreenath Enterprises in Sadar Bazar.

“A lot of our buyers on the new platform are resellers, especially women who started WhatsApp buying-selling groups in their housing societies. For such small resellers, it makes sense to buy products at the wholesale rate at Sadar Bazar online than come to Sadar Bazar,” he says.

However, running a local market online is not easy, say the founders.

Medha Chawla says most shopkeepers in Sarojini Nagar do not often have more than one piece of any particular garment; and in Sadar Bazar, Nitin Goel says most traders, who are essentially wholesalers, want to sell in bulk only. “They put up conditions like minimum order of three dozen pieces of a product, which we try to convince them, is not a good idea.”

Not far away in Khari Baoli, Rishi Jain, 29, is busy encouraging wholesalers in the market to join The Wholesalers, his new e-commerce platform that he launched last year for local dry fruit and spice sellers. “I am providing them with free product photography services, but frankly, a lot of them are not tech-savvy and hesitant to come on board. Currently, about two dozen have joined, but eventually, I hope they all will,” says Jain.

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But Medha and Vandit Chawla face no such problems. Vandit, a photographer, scours the Sarojni Nagar market every day for the latest fashion wear with his colleagues and photograph them inside a two-bedroom flat near the market which serves as their office–cum- warehouse-cum- photo studio. Medha oversees marketing, which mostly happens on their Instagram page. A content writer, she says, she relies on ‘moment marketing’ – some of their Instagram reels have over seven lakh views. Ask Medha about how she plans to compete with the biggest fashion e-commerce companies, and she says, “It is hard for anyone to compete with Sarojni Nagar; it is the biggest fashion fix for women at insanely low prices.”

Many traders in Sadar Bazar and other old markets are also using social media for conducting business. Manish Joshi, a toy dealer in Sadar Bazar, who has customers in states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Bihar says that instead of physically coming to the market, today most of his customers see the samples on WhatsApp video calls and place orders. “Today, 45% of my business comes through WhatsApp,” he says.

Similarly, most hotels and restaurants near Jama Masjid have seen a big surge in online sales. “Before the pandemic only 5% sales were online, now it is more than 40%, a lot of it through our website we launched last year, ” says Adam Rehman, who owns Rehmatullah Hotel, a popular eatery near Jama Masjid Delhi. Almost all the hotels and restaurants in the walled city have discovered the power of social media marketing during the pandemic.

Nitin Goel says that a lot of sellers from various parts of Delhi want to sell on Sadar 24. “But we want to make sure that platform is used only by Sadar Bazar sellers,” he says. Mohit Jain feels that a local online marketplace is a way forward for all wholesale markets in the walled city. “Many customers do not come to the market because of crowds and congestion. They will lap up online versions of these markets”.