While there’s an increasing trend of e-commerce sellers popping up with original creations on sites like Poptron and Instagram, there are sellers who opt to do the opposite.
These types of e-commerce sellers typically resell items from a company to end consumers. They can operate as dropshippers, stockists, or agents—in essence, resellers.
Through resellers, businesses can expand their brand’s reach into new markets much more easily, allowing more people to access their products. One startup that’s looking to enhance this process is Ejenkita, a SaaS platform helping businesses connect, recruit, and transact with resellers across Malaysia.
More than a management platform
The tipping point to developing Ejenkita came from co-founders Zariff Aziz and Faris Malik who noticed fellow resellers’ difficulties in finding the right product and brand to resell for. Individuals exposed to reselling opportunities weren’t able to compare all the available options out there to make the best choice for themselves.
It was a challenge for businesses too, which had to invest in targeted marketing/display ads to convert audiences into resellers.
“This is a costly exercise as resellers that apply are most likely not the right candidates for the business due to a number of reasons, such as the lack of passion in selling the brand or product,” the team explained.
Hence, Ejenkita’s platform wants to provide both parties visibility and accessibility for available opportunities by making information such as the choice of brand, products to sell, management team, the vertical, and more, easily found.
This is one way that Ejenkita hopes to stand out as currently, you’d be hard-pressed to find a local site that acts as a proper “directory” of businesses for resellers to choose who to work with.
Ejenkita has a reseller management system too, but that isn’t what’s interesting about them, since there are names like Ejen2u and Firesell already doing as such.
Where Ejenkita claims to differ is also in its monetisation method, where there are no setup or subscription fees charged to use the service. Instead, sellers are charged a 2% commission fee for each transaction on the platform, a method also adopted by Ordersini, to lower the barrier of entry for users.
Discouraging pyramid schemes
As the platform is free to use—sans the transactions made—one vulnerability I noted to Zariff is in how this may open up aspiring resellers to malicious pyramid schemes and their recruiters.
He assured, “Pyramid schemes typically generate their money from recruitment fees. To ensure that this doesn’t take place on Ejenkita, we will emphasise for businesses to generate their money from actual sales of physical products.”
The team added that Ejenkita will also set guidelines on the site to warn users against pyramid schemes, and enforce community rules that to adhere to.
Starting with populr market segments
Though currently not available to the public yet, Ejenkita has laid out its roadmap on the site, which states that it plans to launch its first official version in Q3 2021. For its early access programme opening in mid-July, Ejenkita is targeting recruitment in the F&B (snacks) and beauty market.
“The products in these two markets transact rather directly, are fast-selling, and have a high potential for recurring purchases. These criteria would allow us to prudently test the commerce aspect of Ejenkita while providing an awesome experience for our resellers,” Zariff and Faris told Vulcan Post.
With the focus on these two popular segments, the platform may just be on track to its goal of attaining 10,000 active users with RM40 million in gross merchandise value (GMV) by the end of 2022.
For the short term, the team is focused on getting their minimum viable product (MVP) right before it’s launched to the public by September this year.
“Long-term, our vision is to build a strong community-driven platform that helps everyday people earn their livelihood through reselling—not just in Malaysia, but in neighbouring countries too,” envisioned the team.
- You can learn more about Ejenkita here.
- You can read about more Malaysian startups we’ve covered here.
Featured Image Credit: Zariff Aziz and Faris Malik, co-founders of Ejenkita
