Online business: WoW.lk gives that elusive choice
If there is one modern day technological juggernaut that both Sri Lankan consumers and businesses cannot ignore, it is the Internet and the power to transact online. The Internet is a powerful medium for connecting prospective buyers with sellers, Sri Lanka has just started to harness the true potential of e-commerce and experience its benefits.
View of the office
WoW.lk, Sri Lanka’s largest online store and one of the pioneers in the industry, has been at the forefront of driving innovation in this field.
Supported by Dialog Axiata Plc, the company was the first to introduce a number of e-commerce innovations to the country such as Daily Deals, Cash on Delivery, Mobile operator bill payments solutions, Sheyantha Abeykoon, CEO WoW.lk says.
“In many senses e-commerce is a great equaliser as it affords the same shopping experience in terms of choice, affordability and service to people irrespective of whether they are urban metro consumers or rural folk living in remote parts of the country. It is also a hassle free and convenient medium for providing small businesses scalability and market reach beyond the immediate vicinity of their physical locations,” he told the Business Times, adding that WoW.lk as an industry pioneer has since its inception taken the lead in offering many consumers and merchants their first truly digital experience. He is optimistic that as the digital infrastructure is built out in Sri Lanka in terms of high speed data connectivity, mobile smart device usage, the opportunity for the future of the industry remains golden. “We have seen in this many regional markets including markets where Dialog’s parent company Axiata operates adoption rates for e-commerce rise as supporting infrastructure becomes more abundant. Being part of the largest mobile operator in the country and one of the largest providers of high speed broadband services and smart devices we have significant insight into how this is unfolding,” he added.
Sheyantha Abeykoon
He said that driving traffic to the site is the hardest part. But he says that in the ensuring years it’ll become easier. Trading online gives advantages in a whole list of areas, opening up opportunities for companies selling online that an offline business can’t even begin to access. At the same time it transforms a lot of things that every businessman has had to deal with such as overhead costs.
According to Mr. Abeykoon, WoW.lk is firmly established as the market leader in the urban sector and is now aiming to expand its presence further in the suburban and regional markets with the goal of taking ecommerce to the masses. “We operate on the fundamental premise that people at the bottom of the pyramid have the same aspirations as those at the top. We have seen (this) across many industries in Sri Lanka and the significant amount of latent demand in these segments that are unleashed once they are afforded the same opportunities as the urban consumer,” Mr. Abeykoon added.
The rollout would be supported by the physical island-wide presence that Dialog has through retail touch points and distribution channels using a hybrid “brick and click” model. Mr. Abeykoon opined that online shopping has the potential to be truly disruptive to how the retail landscape evolves in the country and WoW.lk plans to continue to lead the e-commerce innovation in the country. This year the company plans to go trilingual. “It’s a journey from being just a company mall site to a product site and now a shopping site,” Mr. Abeykoon said, adding that their growth has been rapid so far. Now they want to go into more remote areas and this is more possible now that the mobile phone has given consumers connectivity. What ‘WoW’ has granted them is ‘choice’, Mr. Abeykoon said, adding that 25 per cent of traffic to the Internet is through mobile phones. “The challenge is to grow the brand equity in other parts of the country, while driving people to adopt using E-commerce. According to him, what ‘we’ have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg.”