Takas.lk marks record turnover, volume in 2017

Wednesday, 3 January 2018 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Takas.lk said yesterday it has finished December with a record year in terms of both revenue and volume.

This is highly significant considering that overall consumption in the economy has seen a downward trend, or at best has been flat. Takas attributes the record year to improved efficiencies in marketing and operations due to internal innovation and overall consumer sentiment changing towards the value proposition of e-commerce.

Takas.lk has been at the forefront of technological innovation among e-commerce players in Sri Lanka. The co-founder/CEO of Takas Lahiru Pathmalal said: “We have been able to stay ahead of the game in e-commerce due to our technical innovation and how we have used it to better the customer experience. We have been able to give a better consumer experience by making sure that from the moment a customer orders a product he or she will be made aware of the order status, and that order can be tracked till it reaches them. Our main strength is that we own our intellectual property, so we can modify and adapt our systems to continually make things better.”

Takas has been able to bring the unit costs of order processing down by 30% year-on-year due to these developments along with decreasing order processing times. Adding on to this, Takas CTO Kalinga Athulathmudali said: “We have an internal tech team that works very closely with the operations team to make sure that the solution we build is there to help the end consumer have an amazing consumer experience. We are a consumer-centric technology team.”

The focus on digital marketing has helped Takas.lk reach a much wider audience. Consumers spend most of their time online. Identifying the step of the purchase cycle they are in and optimising offerings to suit that step helps to convert browsers to buyers.

Takas Co-founder/COO Murtaza Moosajee said: “We have been bringing down the fulfilment costs at Takas by nearly 60% year-on-year, while doing this we have been able to meet our KPIs. Also the data that we collect is making the consumer experience so much better.”

In times where consumers are feeling the pinch in their wallets, more and more consumers are switching to buying online. Lahiru said: “Consumers, just like elsewhere in the world, are learning that e-commerce is the way to go. It’s most likely cheaper and you don’t have to put up with bad service or spend your valuable time driving around town to get what you want. The main reason for the uptrend is consumers being smarter about how they buy. E-commerce is a no-brainer and will continue to grow due to this simple logic. Also more than 5% of our total revenue comes from the Monaragala District and 10% comes from Gampaha. This goes to show that no matter where you are in the island e-commerce is playing a role.”

Takas.lk will shortly launch a new mobile website which will greatly improve its consumer experience.

“More than 40% of our traffic now comes from mobile devices, so we are launching a new updated mobile web experience. We are literally setting the standard for others to follow,” said CTO Kalinga. E-commerce will continue to push and make a positive impact for consumers in 2018.