Daraz is known to be the eCommerce leader in South Asia which has been built from a small startup in Pakistan to an important part of Alibaba’s global ecosystem. The company’s Founder and CEO, Bjarke Mikkelsen was in an interview with Gigabit where he discussed strategies and ethos driving its success.

In 2015, the CEO of Daraz, Bjarke Mikkelsen took a leap from investment banking to ecommerce industry because he decided to do something different. He wanted to target the ecommerce industry with great success, he wanted to be in the right industry at the right time in the right market in order to take advantage and do something cutting edge. It is quite surprising how he managed to make a huge success of the shift but according to him, the skills he brought from his previous career helped him quite a lot in the ecommerce. For him, shifting from London to South Asia was a more significant difference.

In his interview, he mentioned that Daraz aims to capture as big a market as possible but also want to make sure it’s all on the basis of organic growth and in a way that users stay engaged on the platform. If customers stop returning, it means Daraz needs to improve, be more relevant or be more fun he said.

Also, this growth resulted in an acquisition from Alibaba Group which is Asia’s eCommerce leader and this further helped Daraz expand exponentially. He said that new technology infrastructure has been a big win for Daraz and Alibaba has always give Daraz the flexibility to localize how Daraz implements products in the market.

He also appreciates the natural beauty of South Asian countries including Pakistan apart from just the business opportunity or talent in the market.

Read more from this interview here.