e-CAB members to vote after 7yrs

Seven years past its formation, the e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-CAB) is on way to let its 795 voters elect its executive council for the first time.  

Reeling from scams of some online platforms surfacing last year, the sector has lost its growth momentum while its entities are finding it hard to acquire new customers as trust has nosedived to rock bottom.

Having tenures of one or two years, the previous executive councils, in a sense, came to office uncontested.

This makes the upcoming June 18 polls very much significant for the 1,700 or so e-commerce entrepreneur members.

A total of 31 candidates will be competing for nine posts for a two-year tenure, according to Amin Helaly, chairman of a commissionformed to hold the election.

A number of voters that The Daily Star talked to were hyped at being able to have their say and expressed hoped for more representation of their hopes and aspirations.

Industry insiders said most of the past leaders were owners of entities whose online trade was more of a secondary characteristic.

The trade body is yet to meet much of its members' expectations and protect and promote interests of entrepreneurs and consumers for proper expansion of Bangladesh's digital economy, they added.

Moreover, the recently proposed national budget for fiscal year 2022-23 did not have anything conducive to the association's major demands, including issues of VAT and tax waivers.

Many members said the e-CAB's reputation took the biggest hit amidst the pandemic in 2021 when reports surfaced of over 25 e-commerce platforms having offered hefty discounts against advance payments only to cheat customers of a huge amount of money.

According to a Bangladesh Bank report, controversial e-commerce platforms received Tk 6,050 crore in just four months last year. Most of their customers and merchants have not been able to get their money back.

"There were demands from the e-commerce sector to take action against platforms like Evaly but the e-CAB was very slow to take action against them," said AjkerDeal CEO AKM Fahim Mashroor.

The veteran entrepreneur of the industry had been vocal against the controversial platforms since the very beginning.

Evaly CEO Mohammad Rassel and Chairman Shamima Nasrin were arrested in mid-September 2021.

But the association suspended its membership at the end of the month alongside that of Dhamaka, whose Managing Director SMD Jashimuddin Chisty has fled the USA.

Both companies allegedly cheated customers of hundreds of crores of taka but also sponsored different e-CAB programmes.

According to the auditor's report of the e-CAB for 2021, Dhamaka, which also took the name of Invariant Telecom, provided Tk 18.5 lakh while Evaly Tk 10 lakh.

The same practice was adopted by other controversial e-commerce platforms such as Falguni, E-orange and Alesha Mart.

Asked why the e-CAB accepted the money in spite of knowing about the surging number of complaints, Mohammad Sahab Uddin, vice president of the current executive committee, said any member can be a sponsor.

"It's not up to the executive committee to select sponsors. It is managed by the e-CAB secretariat," he added.

On e-CAB cancelling memberships only after the arrests were made, he said the association must obey its constitution to act against a member and due process was maintained in Evaly's case.

"We wrote a letter to Evaly in May 2020 warning them as many complaints were coming against them," he added.

Uddin said the current committee has many successes and achievements in the e-commerce sector.

"We first introduced the escrow concept in a meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in 2019 and Bangladesh Bank was later instructed to execute it," he said.

"We also helped formulate standard operating procedure for digital commerce to keep the sector free from anomalies," he said.

He said the existing committee took the initiative to ensure continuation on operations and logistics support in sale and deliver of grocery items during the pandemic lockdowns.

THE ELECTION

The election will mainly be contested by three panels consisting of nine members each.

One is Agrogami, led by the current president, Shomi Kaiser, and general secretary, Muhammad Abdul Wahed Tomal. It also includes fourof the current committee's members.

Of them, Mohammad Sahab Uddin, vice president of the e-CAB, has an online pharmacy called Diabetes Store.

Nasima Akter Nisha, joint secretary of the association, facilitates thousands of female f-commerce entrepreneurs to sell products through her community marketplace Women and e-Commerce Trust – WE.

Of the panel's new three members, Ambareen Reza is the co-founder of foodpanda Bangladesh. As a managing director, she led the platform to take the number one spot in terms of both deliveries and revenue generation.

A similar feat by attained Shahriar Hasan, co-founder and CEO at logistics platform Paperfly.

Uddin said Agrogami wants to set up a "smart secretariat", enhance member services, develop members' capacity, develop and promote scalable startups and undertake entrepreneur friendly policies.

"Besides, we will take initiatives to increase women entrepreneurs in the sector and expand the market from rural to global," he said.

Logistic company iXPRESS Services CEO Md Tazul Islam, a member of a nine-member Oikko panel, said their main aim was to develop a logistics ecosystem in the country.

"In Bangladesh, the e-commerce courier service is not up to the mark. We will train people across the country so that skilled manpower is developed to deliver products to customers' doorsteps properly and efficiently," he said.

Another panel named as "The Change Makers" is apparently led by Waseem Alim, co-founder and chief executive officer of Chaldal.

Alim's leadership helped the home-grown online platform to become the number one online grocery platform in terms of both the number of deliveries and sales revenue.

One of the panel's members, Biplob Ghosh Rahul is the CEO of digital logistic service provider eCourier, which was now expanding globally.

The Change Makers' sole female member, Nusrat Akhtar Lopa, is a successful f-commerce entrepreneur who started selling products through Facebook back in 2015 with a starting capital of Tk 1,200.

She now employs dozens of people and sells thousands of clothing items through f-commerce page HUR Nusrat which has about a million followers.

"We want to transform e-CAB into a strong, mature organisation and retain customers' trust as well as provide our members guidance for scaling up operations," said Alim of Chaldal.

"Most importantly we, The Change Makers panel members, want a transparent e-CAB, which will be able to deliver its demands strongly to the policymaker to bring about a positive change in the sector which will rule the roost in future," he said.