An Interview Session with Mohammad Aarif Khanyari, Founder, Alikart and ESOS Global.
Apart from founding several brands and businesses, Mohammad Aarif Khanyari holds the experience of working with some of world’s top companies and leading multiple teams to strategically plan and execute several successful business development campaigns.
Alikart is a renowned e-commerce company based in Kathmandu, Nepal. The company initially focused on food & grocery, before expanding into other product categories such as fashion and accessories. The company is also expanding its services to India mainly North and South India with its bases in Jaipur and Bengaluru.
ESOS Global, Nepal is a training, consulting and an event management company that provides Entrepreneurship Training and Skill Development classes, organizes Events of Start-up Community of international standard and provides Consultation in Sales & Marketing.
Apart from founding Alikart and ESOS Global, Aarif has founded and successfully running so many other businesses that include first Jewellery brand of Kashmir M/S Ali’s De Jewels, first Cafe in Rishikesh “Cafe de Cashmere” , HIMALY International Startup School as well as Ali’s Industries that promotes Kashmir based Arts and Crafts, Dry fruits, Jewellery, and interior decoration range under brand names of HUNAR, ZOON, D’Fruit and SANAT.
In this Exclusive Interview with Preety Singh for Digipublicschool, Aarif shares about the challenges he came across before launching his own ventures and how he coped up with them. Aarif also shared his views on how data is driving the marketing and how mobile marketing has become a strong base for businesses. He also talked about his target market, the factors that differentiates his business and more.
DigiPS: Hello Mr. Khanyari! Welcome to The Business Talk @ DigiPS!
Mr. Aarif khanyari: Hello!
Question#1: Mr. Khanyari you have founded so many businesses that are working great as on date. So how has been the journey? Any challenges?
Answer: Well! Being in start-up and entrepreneurship my journey has been challenging and tough, but all I can say is I loved the journey and this great experience is still going on. I have learned one thing that success is all about keep going and struggling, the day we stop we die. I have enjoyed the journey so far.
There have been many challenges, the biggest challenge is when you have a dream, an idea to do something out of the box and the people around you don’t believe in you. The other challenges like finance, investment, market, sales, competition, team and so on… I do not consider those as challenges rather they are the part and parcel of the game, the biggest challenge is believing firmly in yourself when everyone says “No”.
Question#2: Very True! Mr. Khanyari online purchase of food and grocery is gaining good traction in developing countries like India and Nepal as well. How is Alikart performing in the market?
Answer: In online we have quite an amazing experience! In food, AliKart is the first online platform to sell Halal Chicken and Momos. We had a super good response and fortunately we were acknowledged & admired by many customers & organisations who were buying from us. AliKart is gaining pace day by day and is becoming talk of the town in Nepali Market. We are the first in Nepal to expand our services out of Kathmandu with our presence in Pokhara and soon starting in Dharan.
Question#3: That’s great! You know, some 10 years ago, we didn’t have online grocery stores but at present people have actually started relying on online stores for their grocery shopping. Please share your views on this.
Answer: With the introduction of Online stores and Ecommerce the world has completely changed. Before buying anything or any idea that comes in mind, we search it online. Same is the case with grocery stores as well, many big players in Kathmandu have either switched or added online option for their customers. Although it has become a tough competition for the players to sustain with the grocery discounts and deals, still it is doing great and growing with the time.
Question#4: That’s good! Why don’t you share something about your target market/ audience and how do you reach out to them?
Answer: AliKart at its inception before a year had two domains: Food and Fashion. Since we found the better options to continue with the fashion, we opted to skip food domain. So, we can say AliKart is growing with full pace in fashion industry and our entire team is focusing on making AliKart a leading and number one online choice for the customers.
We essentially use the offline and online marketing tools both. It includes events or exhibitions in offline and in online we leverage our social media presence and sell online using all the available and result-oriented social media apps.
Our target audience or market is Youth. We target youth. We do research, talk to people, analyze the requirements and essentially the service part through online, we get our share from the targeted market, but I should say that this is the just the beginning of AliKart, we have the bigger aims to achieve.
Question#5: Wish you all Luck! Well! Talking about the online space, due to its inexpensiveness and targeted reach a number of players are entering it. What differentiates you?
Answer: AliKart provides a completely different shopping experience. We thrust on services and quality products more other than huge sales. We love our customers and we create a relationship with them. We have created a dedicated team for CRM i.e. customer relationship management so that we could retain the customers easily and we consider our success with the rate of retention of the valuable customers.
Question#6: And that should be! So, with big ecommerce players like Amazon and Flipkart joining the food & grocery space, is the overall market becoming more challenging?
Answer: Indeed, market is becoming challenging and it is going tougher than before. There may be a big share for big players but that does not mean new players should stop.
Question#7: Right! So, as you said apart from food & grocery, you have your main focus on fashion and accessories. Any plans to enter new categories over the next year?
Answer: I have answered this in above question. We are fully focussed on fashion now. There is all that comes in fashion for the both genders, be it Garments, Fabric, Jewellery, Cosmetics or Footwear. We are working day and night to source the best quality products and put it on AliKart. Not only products, our team is working on registering the best fashion designing boutiques and freelance fashion designers who will be available online to showcase their work. We are coming up as the first online platform that will have such kind of service for the customers. Till the end of the 2019 our plan and target is fix, and we are achieving that with pace.
Question#8: Good to hear that! Well! We’ve heard you are increasing market sphere for your company by expanding its services to India as well. So, which Indian cities are you planning to cover by the end of this year?
Answer: That is a big success for us. We have offers from many people in India to start AliKart. We finally have agreed to start AliKart in North India and South India with its bases in Jaipur and Bengaluru.
Question#9: Wow! That’s awesome! Mr. Khanyari Smartphones have become ubiquitous making it more & more crucial for businesses to have a mobile based marketing strategy! Please share your views on this.
Answer: This is a very important and interesting question. Let me share my story:
When I relocated from Bangalore to Kathmandu my laptop was stolen the only source to start my first company ESOS Global was my Motorola Mobile. And for next 6 months all the wonders done was by my Mobile. I remember I used to create events of business workshops for the start-ups in Kathmandu and market them on the mobile only, that was all I had in that crucial time. One mobile, one staff that was me and one resource person again me to make ESOS a success. Then we founded AliKart – a retail domain, we have a team of 20 people, 6 outlets and a big presence in social media now, but I still give a big credit to my Motorola Mobile. 🙂
Mobile marketing is the most powerful base for businesses as on date, and we shouldn’t skip it or be at all skeptical about including it in our marketing strategy.
Question#10: True! So, something that you would like to put across to those who are aspiring to become an entrepreneur and launch their own venture one day?
Answer: Have strong belief in only one thing and that is YOU. You can change the world, if you are strong enough to face the challenges with honesty, sincerity and a vision. Work hard, find a good mentor, polish your idea every day. One-day success will touch your feet.
If you are launching a start-up or aspiring to become an entrepreneur, I will strongly suggest before you burn cash in other things, test and try it on digital platform, see the response, analyse it, consult a digital marketing agency, start marketing your business on digital platforms. Once you find the idea to be working do other formalities necessary for your venture from investment to hiring, but in the present era do not ever skip digital marketing. With definite & target-based results, digital marketing has kind of become lifeline for businesses mainly SMBs. Retargeting the clients and customers was never so easy. The nature and system of businesses has changed globally, now the businesses run on Data and we must work on it while working with a reliable and trusted digital marketing company or consultant.