Sri Commerce
The inside of one online store, buyonline.lk
There are a lot of Sri Lankan eCommerce sites these days. Anything.lk has combined with Dialog’s various ventures into wow.lk, a shopping aggregator of sorts. Venture capitalists have backed takas.lk (an electronics store) and just today I saw AVStore.lk, a site selling somewhat specialized audio equipment.
Places like Singer and Abans have long done ecommerce but in a rudimentary ‘this also’ kinda way. Now we’re seeing a new crop of companies doing it sometimes as their first line of business. While most people seem to be going for the electronics market, there are also smaller shops like colombotraders.com who do cash on delivery.
The gaps in Sri Lanka are that online payment systems are complicated (no PayPal), credit card penetration is low (I think around 1 million cards out there), and delivery is not that efficient or cheap. That said, India has worse problems (especially on delivery) and eCommerce is booming there.
I’m still not sure whether the model is consolidation a la Dialog and Anything.lk or if smaller businesses will use the Internet in general rather than one particular platform. Either way, it’s good to see.
Posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2012 in Business, Sri Lanka.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
RT @indica: Sri Commerce: Sri Lanka’s growing eCommerce industry http://t.co/yRFx9kHr
RT @indica: Sri Commerce: Sri Lanka’s growing eCommerce industry http://t.co/yRFx9kHr
India has so many online retailers with deals all the time. Deal sites like groupon.co.in or department stores like Jabong.com or flipkart.com or jewelers like bluestone.com who don’t actually have a physical store are some of the growing success stories of India. The population of India coupled with booming middle class who have increasingly disposable income makes it the ideal climate for them to boom. Encouraging to see in this part of the world.
RT @indica: Sri Commerce: Sri Lanka’s growing eCommerce industry http://t.co/yRFx9kHr
Thanks Indi, for mentioning colombotrader.com, our new online only Sri Lankan fashion accessory store.
I think ecommerce is just starting to go mainstream in Sri Lanka. But compare to US and even India we have a long way to go. We will see a lot more ecommerce stores if Government allows local people to receive money through Paypal.
But the biggest hurdle in Sri Lanka for ecommerce (apart from Internet penetration and technology) is the online payment problem, specially with the inability for online sellers to receive payments from shoppers through Paypal. You and many others have written about the Governments Paypal restrictions in Sri Lanka but still we don’t see any action from relevant authorities. Why is this? Do you think the relevant authorities don’t know about the Paypal issue and how it is restricting and hurting Sri Lankans?
If the Government allows Sri Lankans to to receive money through Paypal it will help not only online businesses but web developers, writers, journalists, programmers among others to easily do a lot of online projects and small jobs for foreigner individuals and companies and get paid for it. Paypal is the most used and trusted online payment method in the world.
For example, I’m also a web developer and internet marketer and recently I got a offer from foreign company who wanted to advertise on one of my internet marketing websites. They were ready to pay me $60 every few months for a small ad on my site. But the catch was they were only ready to make the payment through Paypal. because I can’t receive money via Paypal I lost that business. I have lost a lot of small job payments like this because of this Paypal money receiving issue in our country.
I think India and Philippines also had this issue with Paypal till recently. But after they resolved it, a lot more Internet users in those countries started doing small jobs for US and other countries and earn some extra cash and commissions.
Personally if the paypal is allowed those who stand to make most are the small time handcraft makers. Just check on ebay how much people are bidding for handcraft. If played right lots of people who are at the bottom of the pyramid can make good money.
Isn’t there like any good local payment gateways with decent merchant fees? Like Sampath bank maybe?
I think in sri lankan people are not really comfortable using cards. Our society have not really fully embraced the online payment method i guess but we are getting there..