Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?
Ashwin Pachori: During my master's when I was completing my project to understand the retail market and the impact of e-commerce on the retail sector. I have found that India's retail sector was facing huge loss and competition from E-Commerce giants, according to Mr. Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary of CAIT, said offline retail sales have dropped about 30 percent due to the ongoing online sales in the market, "Malls are in a bad shape. Retail outlets there are not able to recover even the rent of per square feet area as footfall has decreased tremendously, and the frenzy of online buying has severely hit offline retailers. Buyers quite obviously prefer shopping online for lower prices and dependable delivery options. Also, I tried to find out that existing ecommerce marketplaces are not trying to help retail businesses, during an interview with a store owner he said- We are not able to operate applications and it's very complicated for us to list and sell products online.
I discussed the whole scenario with my brother - Eshan along with the problems that the retail sector was facing and soon we decided to capture the market gap and introduce a marketplace that can help every kind of seller to list, advertise and sell products online with minimum tech expertise.
Great Companies: What are the various services provided by Horza Private Limited
Ashwin PachoriI: We are on a mission to help retail businesses and every kind of seller to list, advertise and sell products online. If a seller doesn't have a GST we help them in that aspect as well, if a seller just operates a small shop and wants to sell online then we help them in product listing. Many local retailers and store owners are not able to capture the nearby audience so for them we help in marketing so that they can attract and capture the nearby buyers to boost offline or walkin sales for their business.
Great Companies: What makes Horza Private Limited different from hundreds of other similar service providers?
Ashwin Pachori: Before Horza, there were many e-commerce giants and they all were doing really great but our retail business was suffering with huge losses. None of them ever tried to understand the roots of the problem. Because when I met with a few sellers for the first time I found that they were considering E-Commerce as a business threat. All the big names and big campaigns such as - "India k Sellers se bani apni dukan and all '' were fake, maybe few sellers joined other e-commerce marketplaces just because they were technology advanced but most of them were not aware how e-commerce can expand their business reach. Other E-Commerce companies were completely dependent on e-commerce solutions providers such as - Cloudtail, Appario, and etc. None of them wanted to put some extra effort to change the tendency of Indian retailers towards E-Commerce because it really required ground work that no one wanna do.
So we decided to first educate the retail business owners about E-Commerce, How it works, How it can help to expand your business reach. So the first thing we did was educating the sellers or retail business owners. Secondly, we note down all the key problems that were stopping sellers from being a part of digital commerce such as- listing process was too complicated. So we noted down everything and designed our website and application in such a way so that it can be utilized by every single seller. It doesn't matter whether he/she has a D2C brand or just a normal store. Our idea and object was very simple that no one should leave behind every store and retail outlet should become a part of Digital India.
Great Companies: What were the struggles and challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?
Ashwin Pachori: When we start a business, from day 1 everyday we face several challenges and problems such as - lack of knowledge and skills. Generally, in this line we don't have mentors or guides who could tell us what is wrong or right. So we have to make a lot of mistakes but also it is necessary to learn from those mistakes so that they won't appear in the future. And I think experience is the biggest teacher and mentor in your life, with the experience we get guts and confidence that help us to face every challenge in our life.
Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What is 5 years down the line Horza Private Limited?
Ashwin PachoriI: So As I mentioned earlier, No one should leave behind - Firstly We would like to onboard sellers and stores on our platform as much as we can. Secondly, We can enrich the shopping experience of our customers. As per analytics we are third preference for our buyers while shopping so we want to position Horza as first , for ex: When someone thinks shopping Horza should be the first choice. Also in the next five year we would like to become "World's First Universal Hyperlocal Marketplace" that means sellers from across the world would be able to sell products globally through Horza and that will help buyers to shop from a wide range of domestic and international products or brands.
Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
Ashwin Pachori: When you are starting a business just start, don't think of making people happy by doing something that you never want to do. For a few years just try to take care of your happiness rather than thinking of society or family and put all efforts to start your business. Close your ears, don't listen to what others say because there are lots of experts sitting out there to tell you thousands of reasons why your business will fail. Just focus on your vision and have enough confidence to make yourself proud.
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