The share of online retail sales is 20% in Türkiye and 4% in Iran; Why is the growth rate of e-commerce slow in Iran?

Last night, the second event of “Online Iran 02” was held on the occasion of the publication of Digikala’s 1401 report. At the beginning of this event, Hamid Mohammadi and Saeed Mohammadi, the founders and managers of Digikala, mentioned some points from this report and also explained the state of online retail and the digital economy of the country.

One of the most important parts of Digikala’s last year’s report, which was also discussed in last night’s event of this collection, was the issue of the small size of the online retail market in the country. According to Digikala statistics, the share of online retail in the country’s economy is 4 percent, half of which belongs to e-commerce and the other half to social commerce.

Of the 2% share that e-commerce has, half of it belongs to online stores and the other half belongs to Digikala. Therefore, the share of Digikala is 1% of the total 4% of the country’s online retail sales share.

The Mohammadi brothers consider the main reason for the lack of growth in e-commerce to be “little investment in this field” and, besides that, they point to factors such as “a sharp increase in the inflation rate” and “a significant decrease in people’s purchasing power”. Comparing this share with some neighboring countries such as Turkey, whose share of online retail sales is 20%, indicates that this part of the country’s digital economy is lagging behind.

This is despite the fact that according to Saeed Mohammadi, the co-founder of Digikala, Iran was one of the first countries in the Middle East region to switch to e-commerce, but issues such as limited infrastructure, international sanctions, smuggling, etc. The speed of growth in this field became.

Hamid Mohammadi also considers the reason for the lack of growth of e-commerce in Iran compared to neighboring countries to be the low level of investment in Iran and says that “some platforms similar to DigiKala in the region have managed to attract one billion dollars of capital, and this is while investing in The field of e-commerce in Iran is about 300 million dollars.

According to the founders of Digikala, attracting more capital and continuing to develop infrastructural measures, not only in e-commerce and retail, but in other areas of the digital economy, can improve the situation in this area. They believe that in addition to the development of infrastructure, a hopeful effort in the development of online retail can also help the growth of this field.

Saeed Mohammadi pointed out that “our country has created a higher capacity, technology and value chain not only in e-commerce and retail, but also in other areas of the digital economy compared to other countries, and in this regard, even a country like Turkey, which retails Online, it has grown and is in a better condition. For this reason, developing infrastructure and attracting capital and trying to continue the path of growth can cause the growth of the online retail sector in our country.

In presenting the annual report, Digikala managers pointed out the decrease in sales of this collection in the past year. According to them, the sales of digital goods in 1998, 1999 and 1400 were better and higher than the forecasts, and in fact, this group experienced an increase in sales, and the spread of Corona was one of the reasons for this increase.

This is despite the fact that with the total events of last year, from the end of the corona pandemic and reaching the post-corona era to the social and economic crises in the second half of 1401, the growth of digital goods decreased. Of course, according to Mohammadi brothers, in the first third of 1402, part of the slow growth was compensated and they hope to return to the previous growth this year.

Digikala reached 9.7 million in terms of product variety growth in 1401, the number of monthly visitors was 41.5 million and 3.5 million searches were performed on the Digikala platform every day. Also, last year, Digikala users registered 42 million comments for various products on this platform.

Amirhassan Mousavi, DigiKala’s communications manager, and Fatemeh Mirbha, a member of DigiKala’s communications team, presented explanations of a research called “DigiKala under the microscope” in a part of the “Online Iran 02” event. This research, which was conducted with the help of Ispa Opinion Center, was prepared from a statistical population of 3,550 people between the ages of 15 and 90, and according to Mousavi, for the first time, DigiKala went to sources outside of the DigiKala platform to conduct a research about itself. Is.

In this survey, which was conducted in Bahman 1401, various questions about DigiKala were asked to the participants of this research. One of the results obtained from this research is that 62.7% of the participants considered Digikala to be “reputable and reliable”, 31.9% considered it a “normal” brand, and 5.4% of the respondents considered it “unreliable”. .

Digikala’s goal in designing this research was to measure people’s opinions about this collection. This issue has become the concern of the members of this group after the attacks against this business last year. Digikala’s communications manager pointed out that “unlike physical companies, technology-based companies have the most important assets of their customers and the trust of their stakeholders” and explained that knowing what people think of Digikala’s brand has been important for this collection.

According to Mirbha, a member of Digikala’s communication team, in this research, people were asked about their feelings after hearing the name of Digikala. According to them, 5.8% of the people answered that they felt bad or very bad, 33% of them said that they did not feel anything special, and 61% said that they felt good or very good.

Ahmad Naqvi, the commercial manager of Digikala, also mentioned in a short speech to provide statistics and figures about the brands that cooperate with Digikala collection. According to him, Digikala currently works with 27,300 brands, 8,300 of which are Iranian brands.

In addition, Digikala cooperates with 308,000 sellers, of which 6,800 are native and local sellers. Naqvi believes that the result of this large volume and wide range of brands and sellers in Digikala will create more competition between sellers and also provide the possibility of more choice for customers and this event will ultimately cause more prosperity in the economic cycle of the country.