E-commerce is turning out to be a hot potato with young entrepreneurs starting online ventures or expanding them in Patna.
Biharsharif resident Suraj Prakash is ready to open his online medicine portal in Patna. Madhubani resident Ritesh Kumar Choudhary has started an e-commerce venture for household services. Patna's Amritanshu Shekhar, who has an online grocery store, is gearing up for competition to ensure better performance. These young men are slowly and steadily building their network and working hard to the road to success.
"I started my online portal for medicines and health services, www.dawaaii.com, in October 2014 from Delhi and the NCR. I always wanted to do something different and this was my ticket," said 25-year-old Suraj.
"We are established and doing well in Delhi and now, I have decided to expand to Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Jaipur. We will launch the service in Patna by April 1," Suraj added.
The online portal not only delivers prescribed medicines and provides doctor-on-call, ambulance and consultation services but also gives useful tips on health.
Suraj said: "We sell only prescribed medicines. If someone places an order with us, s/he has to scan the prescription on to the website. The prescription is checked and verified by a team of doctors and pharmacists associated with us. We want to launch the venture in Patna to provide the people the same kind of infrastructure and network. If needed, we also contact the doctor who has prescribed the medicine to make sure the prescription is not fake. We have faced no problems in Delhi so far, and hope things will work out in Patna too. We are in talks with the government if we need any clearance."
Ritesh (32) started www.homezifi.com, in December last year. A graduate from Ranchi, Ritesh worked in different Patna companies for eight years before deciding to be his own boss. Now, his team provides Patna residents all kind of services.
"You need a technician for your air conditioner, we have it; you need pest control, we provide it. Working for myself and not just for a salary at the end of the month has been a different experience altogether. I started in December last year. We are getting four to five orders on an average a day," said Ritesh.
"For the services, 80 per cent of the charge goes to the technician and we keep the rest. We are still in the process of creating a database of technicians in almost every locality of Patna."
Amritanshu (34), a software engineer from Pune University, launched his online grocery store GangaFresh.com last Independence Day. Now, he looks forward to big names entering the market so that there is healthy competition in the sector.
"Right now, we do not have a local storehouse but are connected with grocery stores and collect things and deliver to the people's doorsteps. We are in the midst of developing a mobile application for our customers. We are building the business from scratch and we reached an average 10 deliveries a day in the second month of operation. Besides, we offer dry cleaning services too," said Amritanshu.
"We have come to know that Bigbasket (online grocery store operating in several cities such as Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Mysore) is coming to Patna. It will have a local storehouse too. The entry of big players is a good sign and will be good for business. Patna already has Gotmybasket and it is functioning well," added Amritanshu who has earlier worked in Microsoft among other companies.
Industrialists welcomed the coming up of these new entrepreneurs.
Satyajit Kumar Singh, who started an e-commerce venture for selling gorgon nuts two years ago, said: "It is a good initiative and these men should strive to search for new ventures. If they are shunning traditional jobs and venturing into startups, it is a positive sign for society. But they will have to work very hard and try and develop a model which will allow them to make profit from day one."
