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by kchoudhu
3983 days ago
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I hate to be that guy, but... * Given the traffic in Dhaka, you'll forgive me for not believing your one hour delivery promise. * The only way I can see to get around the traffic problem is to either go hyper-local (i.e. maintain warehouses in every neighborhood), or have delivery people walk/take rickshaws. Either way, this isn't going to scale to the entire city without a TON of startup capital. Which I'm not sure you have. * How does YC feel about the inevitable "system loss" that's comes with doing business in Bangladesh? I'm also very interested to hear how YC intends to maintain management accountability in a business halfway around the world. |
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* We will be maintaining warehouses in every single area. We currently have 2 but plan to have 9 to cover the entire city. That is the only way to ensure 1 hr delivery. We are also offering this service for products which are fast moving (around 1500 SKUS). Slower moving products are sent from the main warehouse.
* We will need a bit of capital, but not as much as most people think, it costs us around $230k to start a warehouse and run it for six months. It is a lot cheaper than starting a departmental store in Dhaka, and you get far more efficiency per sq. ft as you are not optimizing for a "browse experience" for shoppers. Our shoppers are our employees and we can control their movement for maximum output/sq. ft. Theory is departmental stores can survive, so can 7000 sq. ft. warehouses.
* I don't see why accountability and management challenges should be any different in BD than it is in the US. Enough startups have thrived in India and China.
* Bangladesh also has a decent history of foreign investments with companies like Telenor and Microsoft managing local offices. So corporate accountability does exist in the country.