Network Effects – The Beginning!

Until 2 weeks ago, I had never paid attention to the term called ‘Network Effect’, but we were experiencing it at SaralMarket. For beginners like me, here is a simple definition –

Network Effect – A network effect exists when a product’s value to the user increases as the number of users of the product grows. The classic example is the telephone.

We had a small occurrence in July when a customer (a fruit retailer) from Nanded shared this picture of his fruit shop on our SaralMarket WhatsApp group. Immediately another customer from eastern Maharashtra called us and said –

“There are green grapes in the photo someone just shared. Ask him from where he got those, they are not in season here. I want.”

And that was a moment of Eureka for us! We realised, what we are building is not just a much better supply chain but an incredible network.

Fruits have a peculiarity of being regional. In the last 3 months, SaralMarket has acquired customers in 12 cities but we are connected with fruit retailers across 23 cities in India. This has given us the ability to get the pulse of fruit markets across these 23 regions on any given day. For example, today our customers in Nagpur purchased Papaya for Rs. 12.5/kg whereas our customers in Rajkot had to pay Rs. 35/kg for the same. We believe technology can bridge this gap at scale and that is what we are leveraging on since inception.

Coming to the benefits of network effect; we started experiencing them with Avocados, World’s Most Perfect fruit, but not widely available in Central and Western India due to high prices as a result of which people here also lack awareness about it. Our network helped us find out the right source for Avocados.

Today, one of our customer has become our supplier and we are able to source and provide best quality Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu grown Avocados to our other set of customers at half the price it is available in Mumbai wholesale fruit market.

We have also invested efforts in creating awareness about Avocados and its benefits with these posters. Today, consumers of many cities across Gujarat and Maharashtra have access to benefits of Avocados at half the respective prices, thanks to SaralMarket’s network.

We would continue to increase and leverage this network, ultimately benefitting the consumers at large. This is only the beginning (of the best to come).

“HOPE TOPE SE BADI HOTI HAI”

Join us in this impactful journey. We love to work with people who have figured out their passion in life. Drop me a line at deepam@saralmarket.com.