Cuttack: At a time when e-commerce sites have revolutionised the concept of retail marketing by keeping a wide varieties of goods and services at customers’ finger tips, a group of youngsters in the Silver City have come up with an idea to sell vegetables online and curb distress sale.
The city residents here can now get vegetables of their choice at their doorsteps. Presently, some online portals like Click-1 Bazaar, RM Fresh, Veggie Cart, Needs on Wheels and FreshTM are working in the cities to sale vegetables items online.
The founders of these portals claim that their primary focus is to help the farmers get fair price of their produce and save them from distress sale. “Farmers in areas like Banki, Athagarh and Cuttack outskirts are selling their produces at a very low price. The wholesalers purchase vegetables from them at a cheaper rate and sale them in city markets at an exorbitant price. Our focus is to help the farming community and curb distress sale. We directly purchase vegetables at fair prices from the farmers and sell it to the customers,” the youngsters said.
Initially, the services were launched in the twin cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack and later were extended to other parts of the state. The online portals were launched in the state in 2011 and now there are over 50 sites which deal with vegetable items.
“The portals deliver vegetable items at doorsteps within 30 minutes to 2 hours of placing the orders. We have divided the city into several zones and employed two to three delivery boys in each zone,” the youngsters said.
Meanwhile, some youngsters from Badambadi are planning to include newspapers and milk in the portal soon which they claim will be the first-of-its-kind in the state.
“We have launched the service keeping in view the interest of the farmers. There has been a growing demand for online vegetables for the past few months,” said Subham Mohapatra, manager of Click-1 Bazaar.
“It is a small effort by the budding entrepreneurs. While youngsters are getting employment, farmers are also getting good price for their produce. The service will bring in a revolution in the field of online shopping in near future,” said Suvendu Swain, industrialist.
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