Following the suit, product exchange portal Faida.com restructured its business model adding a cash component to it. With the new model consumers can now buy and sell products instead of only getting them listed and exchanged on the portal.
Speaking exclusively to IndianMediaBook, Vipul Paliwal, Co –Founder, Faida said, “We believe that change is good and people want to refresh their home and surroundings at regular intervals. Faida.com has now gone a step ahead and broadened its horizon by introducing the exchange facility along with buy and sell.”
The portal is currently available in 8 major cities and by end of this quarter will extend its services to 16 cities combined with other several tier 2 and 3 cities. It also plans to launch its mobile app so as to target new users from various demographic segments.
The company has 40,000 products listed and is currently present across Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Gurgoan, Jaipur, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Indore and Chandigarh. Faida has been amongst initial ones in India to introduce the principle of exchange programs.
Angel Investments
A year ago, the portal raised USD one million dollar Angel funding from New York based Right Gems which has been utilized in expanding their business which is completely supported by promotions extensively through Social Media channels.
“We have been expanding our business constantly and it is backed with marketing initiatives in 8 major cities and shall now start looking forward to our second round of funding. We shall soon be offering a revolutionary concept of online where people can get new items in exchange of old for various categories and usage” expressed Paliwal.
Earlier Business Model
Faida followed the Marketplace model where it focused on getting people with common interests / products to exchange together. The added advantage that the model provided is the safe legal aspect of the business as they were technically not responsible. The people meet amongst themselves and mutually decide if they want to go ahead after checking the condition of the product in question. They finally mutually transfer ownership. When the users have exchanged the items they can go back to the website and inform the deal is done to earn points and with these points they can get interesting Faida merchandises.
The cashless transaction factor worked well for the brand. A sense of trust and belief within their clients were developed with additional feature of chatting, so that the buyer and the seller could sort out their in-differences through it.
Having entered the new business model of buying and selling categories Faida for sure will need to relook at its strategies so as to win through steep competition from brands like Quikr, OLX. What happens next is indeed going to be a must watch.
