Rocket Internet’s fashion e-store for Pakistan now delivering over 1,000 items every day

This article was first published on TechinAsia

Adam Dawood is the founding partner of DYL Ventures, a Pakistan-centric internet consultancy firm. He was one of the first employees of Daraz.pk and its former product manager. Adam has now returned to the family business, DYL Motorcycles, and is looking to the future in both the motorcycle and Pakistan’s startup industry. You can find him on Twitter as @adamdawood.

Daraz.pk, Rocket Internet’s fashion e-store in Pakistan, has just released an infographic (below) showcasing its progress so far. Since its launch in July 2012, Daraz.pk has amassed 360 brands on its site, and 14,000 clothing and accessory items — for both men and women — are now being sold there.

The really surprising figure is that over 50 percent of Daraz’s orders come from outside the major cities in Pakistan. Given that Pakistan has an internet penetration rate of only around 15 percent, it’s a revelation that so many orders come from outside of better-connected urban areas. Daraz has delivered to over 170 cities in Pakistan, meaning there’s still plenty of scope for growth.

Daraz.pk gets 500,000 unique visits per month. That stacks up fairly well against the 15 million visits to sister site Zalora, which operates in 10 countries across Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

In terms of absolute numbers, Daraz is delivering over 1,000 items daily (Update: The title originally said “orders” but that has been corrected to “items”), though there’s no indication of how much people are spending or how many orders those represent. For a sense of scale, local gadget e-store Symbios.pk (not run by Rocket Internet) announced recently that it receives 300 orders per day, with 30 percent of those coming from rural areas. Here’s the graphic from the Daraz team:

(Editing by Steven Millward)