Baslam, a marketplace for selling Iranian products
Social market Hi It has created a platform for selling Iranian products. In less than three years of its activity, this collection has been able to perform well, as in the 11th Web and Mobile Festival as the best Business The year was chosen. Curiosity about the situation and formation of this Startup It prompted us to know more about this collection in an interview with Mohammad Reza Aghaya, CEO of Baslam.
Hi
Hello, it is a market for buying and selling Iranian products. Baslam is a platform to communicate between the end consumer and household, local, rural, urban businesses and any small and large business that produce Iranian products. Bassalam offers services such as application and website to the final consumer for easier shopping from all parts of Iran. On the other hand, it also provides an application to the Iranian product manufacturer, with the help of which he can build an internet booth for himself, offer his products and find customers through the internet world.
Before Baslam
Baslam, as an online social market, officially started working in the fall of 2015. But before that, we had an online store with the same name, which was not a market. That is, we prepared the products ourselves, had a warehouse and sent the products to the customers ourselves. But that business model was not a new thing and there were other successful examples before us and finally we failed in that business.
The failure of that store was a prelude to change Business model Baslam and turning it into a social market where everyone can manage their own business independently and there is no middleman between the buyer and the seller. Of course, starting this market had its own challenges, but with God’s help, it was successful and reached its current state.
team building
Team The initial founders of Baslam were a group of four old friends, most of whom have worked in media, network management, humanities, and industrial management. At the beginning of Baslam team’s work, there was no technical and software development team and it started its work as an outsourcing with a programming company. But very soon it was realized that the required developments are so much that there should be a dedicated team for this work.
Therefore, over a few months and gradually, a 12-person developer team was added to Baslam, among them some back-end developers, front-end developers, user experience designers, data architects and server management, as well as application programmers, and developed the new Baslam platform from Zero and based on the needs of users, they wrote with peace.
Along with this team, other teams are also responsible for doing the following, almost all of them with previous experience and a strong resume in their field of work:
- Operations and logistics management
- customer services
- Marketing and sales team
- Exhibitor service team
Primary product
It took about 9 months for the first version of the product to be prepared by a company, and it was launched in November 2015, and the first stand was added to Baslam with the independent management of the exhibitor. This version of the product continued to operate and was developed until the summer of 2016. But Baslam’s own technical team started working simultaneously from the end of winter 2015 and designed a new product, the first version of which was launched in summer 2016.
From the summer of 2016 to the end of the spring of 2017, Baslam worked in parallel on both platforms and with the duplicate database, and gradually, the parts of the old product were removed and the new student was replaced with it. Until finally, at the beginning of the summer of 2017, the former product that was developed with the Jaws platform was completely shut down and was placed on the new platform that was developed with Laravel, and the development of the new platform continues. .
Market
The experience proposed by Salam to the market was unknown and unreliable at first. We had suggested to the customers to come and buy directly from someone whom they have not met and who has set up an internet booth for himself in another city of Iran. The risk of such a decision was high. Therefore, we decided to encourage people to buy from Baslam exhibitors by reducing the risk of buying. For this purpose, we turned our advertising cost into a shipping cost discount and gave customers the opportunity to purchase these products with a 70% discount on shipping costs.
This strategy worked and many people were willing to experience this type of shopping. Since then, the quality of the products and the different experiences of buying from the village and buying homemade products made customers recommend each other, and in this way, more customers came to Baslam with the recommendations of others.
From the summer of 2016, we started short advertising campaigns, which were mostly focused on advertising in messengers and social networks. Gradually, click ads, advertising on popular sites and AdWords were also added to Baslam’s advertising activities.
Content production was another serious advertising method. In particular, we used the technique of storytelling and story writing to build trust in customers and taught the exhibitors how to tell the story of their business in a very simple way. Even in the booths themselves, a section was considered where everyone could tell the story of their business. The stories also had a great impact on the expansion of this market and caused Baslam and its products to be introduced and shared on social networks.
The gentle and step-by-step advertising policy continued until the fall of 2017 until the product design reaches a reliable point that has the capacity to attract more customers. From the fall of 2017, by attracting a new round of capital and with a more prepared team, Baslam started the initial steps of more intensive advertising, and a more experienced PR group was added to Baslam.
In the market development section on the exhibitor user side, for two years, the main method of attracting new exhibitor was the use of an Iranian tourist character named “Yaser Khosro”. Yaser Mohaddisi, who was in charge of this role, constantly traveled to different cities and villages and built tourism on the axis of home businesses, and on each trip, he invited new people to Baslam in local events. His travels were reported on social networks, and through that, new exhibitors came to Baslam.
Another method of expanding the market on the side of the exhibitors was designing a group game for the exhibitors called “League of Newbies” in which the experienced exhibitors would choose people from among the newly established exhibitors and become a team. The teams then competed in a one-month period to sell more of their products and attract new exhibitors. This game was able to triple the number of Baslam exhibitors in a relatively short period.
Competition
Currently, we do not have a competitor that has exactly the same business model as Baslam. But there are potential competitors who share a part of the market with us. for example:
- Chlorine: Multivendor platform that works only in crafts.
- Passage application: Multivendor platform that shares with us in some sectors such as clothing.
- Digi-Kala: A multivendor platform that still does not have a common product segment, but soon it is going to enter the market of rural and agricultural products that are common with Baslam.
- Bamilo: In the handicraft section
Feedback
Baslam users, especially seller users, have a very detailed and daily relationship with Baslam and send their points of view to the Baslam team on a moment-to-moment basis. Almost the development of my booth app has been done from the beginning based on their feedback, and step by step, it was their need that has brought my booth app to this point.
But the most important feedback we have received from the exhibitors is that the exhibitors have a serious need to communicate and be present in the community of other users, and it is during communication with each other, dialogue and cooperation that they achieve the most success. Based on this, since the beginning of 2017, Baslam has been moving towards becoming more social and trying to make communication between users easier and more effective than yesterday. For example, the design of user profiles has become more important to show their independent identity and gradually people can follow each other and make decisions based on each other’s experience; Either to buy products from other stands or to sell their own products.
Capital attraction with me
Baslam started his business with some small loans from Science and Technology Park and some entrepreneurial funds. In 1995, with the finalization of the first version of the product, it attracted the first round of limited capital. The first investor could not fulfill his obligations at the end of 2015, so at the beginning of 2016, we managed to receive capital from one of Tehran’s VCs.
Baslam was able to achieve its KPIs much earlier; Therefore, he was able to continue the first investment in the form of a bridge, and now with the stability of his product and preparation for the scale, he is preparing to start negotiations for the next round of investment.
Hello development
Currently, the first two parts of the product have safely reached the point of stability. It means that product purchase and product sale are being done simply in Baslam.
The next section to be added to Baslam is the sale of services, which has different coordinates than the sale of products. Although in this current situation, dozens of booths are engaged in providing services to other exhibitors and have adapted themselves to the current platform.
In the future, the possibility of micro investment will also be added to Baslam. So that users can play a role in the development of other businesses safely by bringing small capitals and get a certain profit.
Finally, Baslam is supposed to be a comprehensive platform for the development of small businesses.
Challenge
There have been many challenges on the way to peace, the main ones are as follows:
- The initial challenge of trusting customers to buy from unknown sellers.
Our solution: Lowering the risk of buying with a discount on the shipping cost, guaranteeing customer satisfaction and full refund, using the storytelling technique to get to know customers and exhibitors.
- The challenge of exhibitors in learning sales techniques
Our solution: The game of fresh breaths and the plan of captains
- The challenge of monitoring and monitoring all orders
Our solution: Development of multiple dashboards to track all orders intelligently
- Exhibitor error challenge and non-commitment to product shipment or product quality
Our solution: Development of a possibility called “stand score” that shows the past performance of the exhibitor to the customer and reduces the risk of buying new customers. And of course, it gives the exhibitors more motivation to comply with the rules and regulations.
- The challenge of the high cost of shipping products
Our solution: Creating a “one-bowl” plan and aggregating the items of an order in the centralized warehouse of the post and sending with a single package, which both increased the speed of sending and reduced the cost.
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