KARACHI: Local e-commerce businesses have started giving tough competition to multinational corporations with innovative launches as they had a very fruitful Black Fridaythis year. With increasing online shopping trend in the country, as many new local players have sprung out launching full-fledged online stores. E-shopping portals are continually pushing new boundaries, introducing new item categories and new marketing strategies such as ‘BlackFriday’ sales to push their growth. On the world’s largest online shopping event, this year Pakistani stores have entered into a proper sales extravaganza offering unlimited range of the products under more intense competition. An analyst at Topline Research Hashim Sohail attributed this rising trend in online shopping mainly to low inflation, rising consumerism on the back of increasing urbanization, increasing smart phone penetration and growing 3G/4G subscriber base. ‘Digital payment solutions and increasing demand from younger population in the age bracket of 15-35 years (35% of the country’s population) will further fuel growth in the local e-commerce industry which currently stands around $30-35 million”. Compared to last year, a larger product base was being offered this time around while competition remained stiff with increasing number of online stores Yayvo, Daraz.pk, Homeshopping.pk and Ishopping.pk announcing Black/White Friday discounts. Offerings included fashions items, accessories, consumer lifestyle goods, health equipment, sports equipment, home appliances, mobile phones and gadgets with discounts of up to 80%. Daraz.pk has claimed to have become first online store to cross Rs1 billion sales during its Black Friday event as 20% of the local internet population visited Daraz during the BlackFriday where the company surpassed the number of orders it had received last year. On the other hand, Yayvo.com, e-commerce firm of TCS, a leading unlisted courier service provider in Pakistan, claimed to have around 500000 visits on their website during the BlackFriday week while 60000 of them translated into actual sales. Taking an average expenditure of Rs3, 500 per cart this translates into total estimated sales of Rs 200 million under the sale. Another e-commerce store, Homeshopping.pk termed the day as ‘White Friday’ and claimed to have around 200000 visitors on their website during the entire day. As per their claims, the company received around 1,000 orders in the first hour with average expenditure reaching to Rs18, 000 per cart. Hasan Saeed Akbar, Head of Corporate Communication at Yayvo said that TCS launched Yayvo in 2015 and within this short span of its history, the startup has grown to be the largest national e-Commerce player and a serious contender to international companies like Daraz. ‘Having introduced many new innovative marketing techniques, Yayvo followed a ‘Shock & Awe’ strategy on this Black Friday, with an early launch of their Black Friday Sales on 18th of November’. The Yayvo Black Friday was not just about great discounts; fast delivery was also a major aspect. Over 1,500 phones were delivered in just 120 minutes creating a lot of positive buzz in the market, he added. Akbar said, ‘With rapidly growing trust in online ecommerce and a populace willing to buy online – ecommerce promises to be the big thing in the Pakistani business market in the years to come’.