Finally, reluctant shopkeepers enter e-retail

New Delhi: Small traders, after resisting e-commerce for a longtime,  have taken plunge in the online market space by launching their own portal. Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), which represents small traders in the country on Monday launched an on-line portal www.elala.in  to promote business-to-business and trader-to-customer transactions thereby  eliminating middlemen and reduce costs to promote 5.77 crore small businesses.

www.elala.in was inaugurated  by urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu. By leveraging digital technology under e-lala initiative, Mr Naidu said that the emerging global threat from e-commerce to small traders could be addressed with proper outreach and marketing strategies.

According to CAIT, e-lala enables physical stores to have their own online stores enabling them to retain their customer base besides additional source of growth in business. Since it is a city-based portal with involvement of only local traders, choosing an object becomes easy for consumers.

“We are eyeing presence in 100 cities and 50,000 sellers by March. E-lala will not have any warehouse. The delivery will be managed by the sellers,” CAIT secretary general Praveen Khandelwal said.

E-lala includes a speciality corner promoting unique products associated with each city, an inquiry corner for consumers which will be responded to in 24 hours and an artisans corner to display their products. MasterCard and HDFC Bank will be providing digital payment solutions for the portal.

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