SaahiHain - Vocal for local

Nowadays our lifestyle has changed, from time consuming and crowded markets to online shopping, we are moving forward. And with the flow of time, we have thousands of e-commerce platforms around us. But have you ever heard of a social commerce platform?

Then let’s talk about “SahhiHain”. SaahiHain is a social commerce platform promoting ‘shop from local’ where people can view local shops, chat with the sellers on WhatsApp, and pay directly to them via UPI. They are providing a peer-to-peer payment solution between the sellers and the customers and thereby working on a ‘No Commission’ model. Here customers also get a chance of bargaining with the sellers.

Co-founders,  Rajanya Guha, Arijit Mukherjee, and Arnab Roy, started the venture three years before. Having knowledge of the garment sector, they thought of exploring themselves in that genre. After making a thorough research of the market, analyzing people on what they want, and in what way they want, SaahiHain was born. SaahiHain is a bootstrapped venture till now and they will start looking out for investment once they achieve certain milestones.

SaahiHain is not exactly e-commerce, but actually a social commerce platform. The main difference lies with the fact that it is not a marketplace model. Customers can directly talk to sellers and sellers can get payments directly on their accounts. Even though, they had started as a marketplace model, their Research and Analytics team found out the pain points of the sellers. The study revealed that the sellers want to sell online, but trapping of huge capital, maintaining complicated dashboards, massive commission rates repel  them from venturing into the online world and thereby emerged this concept where sellers can sell in a hassle free way. The focus is to provide a hassle free on boarding which includes cost effective product & store photography, product enlisting and WhatsApp friendly business communication to retailers from different cities who primarily have offline physical existence. Peer-to-peer payment solution leveraging UPI apps like Gpay, Paytm, PhonePe will let the shop to accept payment directly from customers and thus will help more SMEs to overcome capital trap and come online. In future, they have a plan to build their own AI and Analytics Team to offer innovative solutions based on user engagement. 

Lockdown due to COVID – 19 has impacted a lot. They are almost in the final phase of setting up remote work procedures for their entire team. Once it will get completed more than 90% of operations can be done entirely from home. There is also a positive side to the story. Retailers, who are totally reluctant to sell online, now are communicating. Within a month, 15 shops have started a partnership with them and 50 more shops are in the waiting list. It is hoped that with gradual decline of COVID – 19 cases and businesses starting to gain momentum, they will be able to scale up at a rapid pace. In five years, they aim to be the industry leader for hyper-local shopping from local markets and exhibitions in tier – I and tier-II cities.

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