Kumar P. Saha is the founder and mastermind behind finding India’s No-1 platform to sell online – NDHGO. Kumar is a serial entrepreneur. After successfully setting up Senrysa, one of the most successful fintech companies in Financial Inclusion, he is now focused on the retail revolution by playing an instrumental role in leading NDHGO. Envisioned with a simple idea of offering a level playing field to unorganized retail players to compete with organized aggregators, Kumar introduced NDHGO in 2020 as a solution that empowers small and medium businesses to go online in less than a minute.

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What inspired you to foray into NDHGO, and how do you see this solution panning out in the future?

I could see the future of retail being systematically threatened by massive online aggregators and decided to build a technology platform that would empower retailers of all sizes and is free. NDHGO operate on the principle of ‘e-commerce for all’, which is to offer a level playing field for all in the arena of retail.

As NASSCOM in their recent report has predicted, the next wave of growth in the retail segment will be from online and offline collaboration. Such sales will touch $640 billion by 2030, with digitally enabled retail contributing 43%. So, I see our solution panning out fruitfully in the future.

2. How will the offline retail benefit from NDHGO and as online aggregators expand their reach?

Traditional retail will benefit in multiple ways from NDHGO, which is an AI-based retail technology platform. Anyone can set up their professional e-commerce store using the NDHGO platform. We have dissolved various constraints of these entrepreneurs by providing in-built catalogue builders, payment gateways, etc. NDHGO is also partnering with leading banks to offer discounts to customers, similar to what they are offering to large online aggregators. All this will bring traditional retailers at par with, if not better off than, online aggregators in terms of quality of process, transaction and customer experience. At the same time, customers can continue to enjoy the wonderful historical relationship with their favourite, loved and trusted traditional retail stores.

3 . How have you simplified your technology to enable offline merchants to use it?

NDHGO, with a mobile-first approach and simplicity of adoption, would offer local businesses pre-built catalogues and integrated payment solutions. Businessmen having simple number literacy can avail of this technology by downloading the app and registering the business in a few seconds. Then they can list their products from the NDHGO Catalogue Builder and share the link to their store with customers through WhatsApp and trending Social Media.

4. What is the growth path that you have charted for NDHGO?

As NDHGO is on a mission to democratize technology, it targets to enlist the entire 60 million traditional retailer bases across India and empower them. We have a target of acquiring ten million retailers by the end of 2021.

5. What is the revenue model of NDHGO and what strategy have you put in place to ensure funding?

NDHGO offers a complete solution for merchants without charging a commission on sales. The model runs on a nominal yearly subscription.

We have been self-funding this initiative; however, we will go for external funding at an appropriate time.

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