When the pandemic COVID-19 caused a lockdown in India, one of the most affected groups were independent sellers and creators. They faced financial problems that had a huge impact on their lifestyle. This is when Prashanth Jogiralla, the founder of Unekha decided to also push his website as an e-commerce marketplace. “The motto is to reach out to homemakers, students and independent sellers where they can sell their products online. This is the biggest thing we did during the pandemic and now we have almost 90 plus sellers on the marketplace,” he said.
Credits: Dhanush
Prashanth explained that Unekha is like a creator’s platform whereby using social media one can connect with creators, approach them and converse with them. “You can also upload your works. On the other end, it is a marketplace where you can sell your products globally. You can have control over your store and no third person has control,” he added.
He added, “I had been following up with big e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon that provides sellers a platform to sell their products but I observed a lot of upfront charges were taken such as for listing their products or for setting up their stores there were a variety of charges. So, I wanted to have a marketplace where there is only one set of charges and the sellers need not pay any upfront charges.”
At their marketplace, they only charge the commission rate when the product is sold and the e-commerce site does away with upfront or monthly subscription charges while allowing unlimited products to be listed on the store.
“Unlike other marketplaces, we mainly focus on handmade product sellers from rural areas, homemakers, and also college students who are making their products. It could be art-related or clothing or handmade. We are trying to reach out to them, and create awareness to sell their products online on our site,” said Prashanth.
He mentioned that the pandemic created a big change for the creators who were full-time into freelance jobs or gigs. “The world has moved virtually entirely and even the existing e-commerce markets were the only ones which were benefited during this period. Unekha initiated ‘Vocal for Local’ which has helped creators using our marketplace to sell their products,” added Prashanth.
Unekha was started in 2016 when Prashanth was pursuing his engineering from Malla Reddy College, Hyderabad. “My friends and I came up with the idea of creating an online portfolio website. Later in 2018, we started to do offline events like art exhibitions, workshops, performing arts-related events, and meet-ups. We have also published an anthology ‘VIBGYOR – Shades Of Life’ with the 40 plus writers involved from all over India and few foreign countries. During the lockdown is when we started this e-commerce marketplace with very nominal charges,” he added.
Prashanth shared that they had a lot of events planned during 2020 but due to COVID-19 all of them were postponed. “We had free time to come with new initiatives for our start-up and we came up with the idea of a marketplace to help the independent sellers and also for us not to feel left out because we were unable to do events or connect with our creators,” he said.
“Parallelly with the e-commerce marketplace we were doing we were doing small talk live sessions where creators took live sessions during the lockdown that helped us to connect with the sellers and other creators,” said Prashanth.
Presently, the team of Unekha looks forward to conducting live talk sessions and on-ground events. “We did a meet up in Hyderabad during February and it went well. We are planning other events but the second wave seems to be concerning in Hyderabad and other cities as well so we are a bit skeptical about what we should do,” he added.
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However, Unekha looks forward to extending its e-commerce marketplace base now. “But right now we have approached more sellers to list their products on our marketplace at the same time continuing with live talk sessions with creators on Instagram,” said Prashanth.
“Unekha is situated in Hyderabad but we have conducted events in other cities like Pune, Delhi as well as collaborated with organisations like PepperFry. We have been collaborative partners for a lot of events in different cities too,” added the founder.
Unekha doesn’t limit itself to being a domestic e-commerce website but is a global marketplace where sellers from other countries have been listed too. The marketplace offers many features that help them to add their products based on customized and unique techniques. It is an affordable marketplace for students and independent sellers to sell to domestic and international customers.
Listen to Unekha's journey here:
Credits: Ananya Mariam Rajesh
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