BENGALURU: E-commerce portal Voonik, which started as an affordable fashion alternative to the likes of Myntra and Jabong, is going big on opening its portal for artisans and manufacturers, in an attempt to help them get direct access to consumers.
Reducing its dependency on retailers and wholesalers, Voonik is looking at increasing overall sourcing of its products to 33 per cent directly from weavers and manufacturers in the next 12 months.
Speaking to Express, Sujayath Ali, CEO and co-founder of Voonik, said that at present 20 per cent of the products sold on the e-commerce platform came directly from artisans and manufacturers. “Rather than going to a master weaver or a franchisee or a wholesaler, we want to move completely towards manufacturers, weavers and shoemakers, so it becomes a platform for these people.
The idea is to go to the core base. For example, when it comes to silk, we directly go to the weavers in Uppada,” Ali said adding that the company was able to offer products at affordable prices because they cut out middlemen from the chain. Nonetheless, they depended on retailers and wholesalers for new products which were yet to be tested for feedback from customers.
In line with its aim to offer fashion at affordable prices, the company is currently taking 10,000 orders a day out of which 75 per cent of the orders are from non-top 10 cities in the country. According to Ali, majority of their orders are coming from tier-2 and tier-3 cities, apart from a huge section of middle income customers in the metros. With 27 million downloads till date, the company is now able to garner 7-8 million active users every month. There are 8,000 active vendors as part of the firm.