Pakistan is a difficult market to operate in, says Daraz CEO

Does the founder and group CEO of Daraz, largest player in Pakistan’s ecommerce market of $1.5 billion, think the country is a difficult market to operate in? “Absolutely. I’d say so,” said Bjarke Mikkelsen, who heads the Alibaba-owned ecommerce platform operating in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. In an interview with Dawn during his one-day visit for the inauguration of the country’s first automated smart distribution centres in Karachi and Lahore, Mr Mikkelsen said the single biggest challenge in ecommerce in Pakistan is of low trust and seller education. The group CEO of the online marketplace, which claims to have a 35 per cent share in the national ecommerce pie with 20 million active monthly users, believes the trust deficit problem is peculiar to developing countries. “If the seller sends a red t-shirt instead of a blue one, that only undermines trust. The customer will not buy again. We can only be as good as our sellers,” he said, adding that the trust deficit exists in developed markets like the United States and Europe to a “much, much lesser extent”.