The growth of e-commerce has been a gradual but highly profitable one. E-commerce is said to have started in Bangladesh about a generation ago in the late 1990s. At that time, gift websites offering their wares to residents outside of Bangladesh was a successful business model. The following 20 years were marked by relatively slow growth.
Two unprecedented changes occurred in 2009 in Bangladesh, which significantly improved the volume and variety of e-commerce. That year the Bangladesh Bank began allowing online payments, and the country of Bangladesh also introduced WiMax internet. The combination of these two changes leads to an explosion of e-commerce sales in Bangladesh and exports around the world.
The market really started to open up four years later in 2013 as the Bangladesh Bank permitted international credit cards vis-a-vis the purchase of goods and services. A few factors in addition to those already listed are attributable to the boom that Bangladesh received; these factors include rapid growth in the number of Bangladeshi internet users, the growth of those included financially in the developing economy of Bangladesh, a move away from in-person sales to online purchases, and much higher rates of disposable income per capita.
A digital logistics platform will become an increasingly important component in maintaining efficient logistics throughout the post-pandemic phase. Twinning a digital logistics platform with a more diversified logistics fleet will also enable companies to place and deliver online orders, which will likely be more frequent while the pandemic is dealt with, much more efficiently. Faster delivery times and a higher percentage of successfully delivered orders should follow. The adoption of potentially novel approaches to logistics, such as overseeing a water transport network, could be explored to achieve a competitive advantage over competing businesses.
Becoming more efficient, however, sometimes means becoming part of a larger network of businesses rather than competing directly. Therefore, business owners, especially start-up business owners, might want to consider centralized warehouse systems to avoid a large initial investment. Decentralized warehouses will, also, enable businesses to shorten their lead times and achieve greater flexibility in a way that allows businesses to respond more nimbly to the changing needs of their customer bases. Efficient logistics is arguably more important than ever post-pandemic.