Join us behind the doors of DigiKala, Iran's largest online store, along with the secrets of DigiKala from yesterday to today.
There is no doubt that Digikala is more than just an online store in the current market of technology businesses. A website that is no longer just a content reference for technological tools and can be considered a full-fledged online store for electronic tools: from laptops, mobile phones, and digital cameras to kitchen, office, and audio-visual equipment, all of which have the common feature of being electronic. . Its backstage is much more detailed than its frontstage. 400,000 visitors per day is a very valuable asset for Digikala to speed up investment in its online store.
They didn't get here overnight; Since 2003, they felt the need for such a website on the Persian web and implemented it in 2005. In 1991, they accepted the partnership offer of Sarava Investment Fund and made a reasonable leap in their business. "Increasing development" of the collection is the shortest word that can be used to describe the goal of the ambitious, serious and determined managers of Digikala in 2013. The company has a total of 300 personnel, whose managers Hamid and Saeed Mohammadi say with certainty: "This number will reach 700 by the end of the year." It is not easy to reach the heart of the site, they plan to exchange information with several foreign stores in the same week, so they are busy hosting. Saeed Rahmani is the first man of Sarawa on the trip and the coordination takes a long time. All this difficulty for the youngest company introduced in the attached company tour section? As mentioned earlier, this site and its founders are the oldest young company in Iran's current business environment. Their success story is the dream of the masses of young people who want to build Google, Microsoft, and maybe like these two Amazons in the future of Iran.
Arsbaran Cultural Center was a good sign to easily find the building in front of it where the Digikalais stayed. If you are around Tehran a lot, you will easily find the building known by many as Oriflame; Now that large glass storefront showcases well-crafted customer service desks and DigiCala's new logos. The service and customer affairs department, which had a stylish and beautiful design, could be seen from the main street. At the door, we see Saeed Mohammadi standing at the elevator. Unlike the narrow and semi-dark corridors of the public space, there were no walls between employees and managers. Although such glass walls show a modern organizational culture and to some extent show the horizontal structure of the collection, but at the same time, it helps to make the work space more open. The first impression is correct; The company plans to redefine its structure, marketing and even its visual identity. Hamid joins us in the glass room: "The company is currently concentrated in two locations in Tehran, but a third office is also planned to be opened in Pardis Shahr Science and Technology Park in the next few days." The central office where we are now, which is known as the Arsbaran building, deals with financial and commercial work and management meetings are held there, and the authority of the leader of Digikala can be attributed to it. The second office, which is called the Order Processing Center, is located on Fatah Road, and the third office, whose forces are supposed to be transferred there in the near future, is called the Technology and Marketing Center. The separation of these three offices seemed strange to us; Hamid Mohammadi stated that one of the reasons is the limitation of finding a building in Tehran that can have these three collections together. Little by little, we realized that the service processing center, at least in terms of dimensions and size, should be something beyond our mental imagination, which is the limiting factor that has prevented us from allocating space in the center of Tehran to digital goods. Together with the founders of Digikala, we will start our tour of the company from the first floor, the service and customer affairs department: where you can see Arsbaran Cultural Center from its glass door. Modern and bright designed to make the customer feel positive and comfortable. Mohammad Jahannama is the head of this department and even though he was talking to a client, he came to welcome us and after giving the necessary instructions to the client, he started explaining about this unit: "Digikala does not have after-sales service for the products it sells, but A period of seven days has been considered for buyers from this online store so that they can exchange their goods if there is a problem." This guarantee can be considered one of the most important secrets of Digikala's success, which can actually be seen as a model of Amazon, which is the largest online retailer in the world: "There are 14 people working in this department, who work from half past eight They respond to customers at five in the afternoon, and we have about 15 to 20 visitors a day." They have designed a showcase that the customer is in direct contact with very intelligently, and it is clear that the customer's experience and perception of the collection is very important to them. There is a computer on each of the tables to teach the customer how to access online services if needed. One half floor higher, you can see the call center of the same section. We go to the third floor through the stairs, the steps of which are not at the same height in some places. "Accounting returns" is the title of one of the documents that is open to one of the employees of this unit in the Excel software. Trying to extract sales figures is futile. Saeed laughingly says that no one has all the information in one place in Digikala! After a brief visit to the third floor where the financial department was located, we move to the fifth floor and go to the room of Majid Kazemi, the supply manager, to talk to him about the supply flow. Let's talk about goods in Digi-Kala. He is young and his voice is resonant and loud, and it does not suit his face at all: "We have a strategic cooperation with major distributors in supplying goods and we do not import anything. In addition, brands and suppliers want their goods to be sold correctly and respectfully so that their reputation is not damaged, and Digikala is one of the best places to meet these demands." The customer contact and communication center is also located on the other side of the floor, where about 30 people are responding to customers and users of DigiKala. Hamid Mohammadi, the CEO of Digikala, who accompanied us during all the stages of the visit to the company along with his twin brother, says that the call center will be moved to the operator's building (order processing center), which was recently launched: "More than a thousand calls to the center per day. Our contact will be established and of course the order number will be sent to the customers via SMS and email. Of course, users who make a purchase from the Digikala website can find out about the status of the product they have ordered online and can understand the status of their order with statements such as "in stock", "sent", etc. When we go to the sixth floor, it's lunch time and the staff move to the canteen on the seventh floor to eat. The product and IT infrastructure unit consists of two parts; one part where the software development unit is located and the other part, the infrastructure unit that works on the communication between Digikala units and buildings, data center, cloud, and such issues. In fact, here the digital product itself is considered as a product and the product unit does the work related to its maintenance and development. Reza Hamzeh, the manager of the software development unit, describes the process of choosing technology and website design as a long process that has been thought about a lot until it has reached this point. It is clear that from the point of view of Digikala, the art is not at all in the product and its accompanying content, but also in their virtual showcase: "Digikala matures its software and the software we have now is several times the previous version and It covers many more processes." At first, they started with four software developers, and considering that Digikala is out of the startup mode and approaching its maturity, this number has reached eight people, but Hamid Mohammadi, who is standing watching the journalist team and the manager of the software development department, is surprised by the number of these people. The team informs 55 people by the end of the year. The managers of DigiKala strongly emphasize on the software aspects and its development, and except in special cases, they do not believe in outsourcing this part to outside the organization, and they believe that the view of DigiKala is a culture that should be formed inside the organization itself. We return to the first point, the fourth floor, to learn more about this floor where the marketing, human resources and management units are located. Gita Biyani is in charge of the customer experience evaluation department, and as the name of her position suggests, in her unit they measure the customer experience and try to improve it: "From the moment the customer enters the website until the order is received, we try to Let's inquire about the point that affects their experience as a customer and take steps to improve this experience and report its feedback to the management." While Digikala is working on the evaluation of customers' experience within the collection, in the field of field research, it also uses specialized companies in the field of market research to promote the growth and development of this collection in 2013 better and more effectively: "On-time delivery" We check the quality of the packaging, the quality of the goods, the price, and every factor that is important for the customers in the purchase process, and we try to contact five percent of the customers so that we can have a good result from their point of view and as a result, we can be more successful in providing services. do." Certainly, along with the delivery invoice, the price is one of the other important factors in encouraging internet users to buy online, and Saeed Mohammadi believes that the prices of digital goods are the best prices in the market: "I can say very strongly and decisively that the prices of digital goods, in equal conditions, The best price in the market. When I say the same conditions, I mean that Digikala does not sell any goods without warranty, smuggling and unhealthy because we believe that the customer will be harmed by this matter, and in general, the goods available for sale in Digikala are in the price category, below the average and at the bottom of the market. It has, and in other words, products with a price floor and lower than average are the most abundant among our products. With Itroz, customer trust is one of the most important keys to the success of any business. A point that Gita Bayani, as the manager of the customer experience evaluation department, has encountered a lot: "It is interesting that there are many of our loyal customers who, when we ask their opinion about the prices, say that we do not check the prices because of the trust we have in DigiKala. And we come and buy directly from Digikala." When we visited the product unit, it was lunch time, and as a result, we could not talk to the manager of that department, Fateme Karroubi, about the Digikala mobile application. is cheerful and optimistic and claims that DigiKala is one of the first companies in Iran that works seriously on "user experience": "We have had a user experience team at DigiKala for almost 10 months, which according to my own activity in this "I can confidently say that we are the first company to work on this issue in the online environment, the web." The very extensive research of this team in order to increase the quality of the user experience led to the definition of two phases for this group. In the first phase, by targeting the users who placed Digikala as a target in the community, an effort has been made to make the website more user-friendly and make users feel better at work. have to do with it; The second phase is dedicated to the mobile application: "Now the study and design phase of our mobile application is almost over and we are starting to implement it; Our plan is to initially do this on Android and iOS operating systems for mobile phones and tablets in various sizes." We prepare for an inner-city trip around Karaj Old Road, where Digikala's order processing center is located. Before leaving the central building, while the Mohammadi brothers were preparing for this inner-city trip, we visited their room. A room with glass walls, which showed that Digikala's managers consider themselves part of the group and want to keep Digikala's startup culture alive in the company. The statue of the 4th Fava Festival and the statue of the best website in the 5th Iran Web Festival in Bahman 91 were part of the statues that were there and attracted attention, which shows a part of the successes of this collection in recent years. Although their biggest success is the success in completing a start-up in Iran's declining IT environment; The atmosphere that seems to have taken on a better color and smell in 2013 and after the new government took office. They start their cars to go to the DigiCala order processing center, and although their faces are similar, their cars have major differences. At this time, we get a chance to hear from Hamid Mohammadi about the background of Digikala and himself: "I received a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Khajeh Nasir University and a master's degree in MBA majoring in marketing from science and industry, and after several years of working in the market Together with my brother, we implemented the idea of Digikala in 1985. It is impossible not to be surprised upon entering the Digikala warehouse. The environment we entered was far beyond my imagination, both qualitatively and quantitatively. An area of 10,000 square meters in which a shed of 5,000 square meters was built. At the entrance, well-dressed guards welcomed us, and on the right side, there was a room with very neat closets for employees. There is no wall in this building and the glass is a barrier between different rooms. The shed has one entrance and one main exit. Two big doors, one on the right side is related to bringing the goods and the other where the couriers, post vans and Tipaks load the products to deliver to the customers. There is a door in the middle of the complex where most employees enter and exit. Somewhere in front of the rollers, goods and numerous shelves, Saeed gives us a brief description of the process of forming the order and supplying the goods: "After the classification of the goods is determined, the list of goods goes from marketing to the commercial unit, and after negotiating with the suppliers and suppliers, the agreed goods are purchased. and delivered to the warehouse that is here. After registering in the software system, a special barcode and serial number is generated for each product and according to its size, it is placed in a suitable place in the warehouse. After the order is received, the goods will be removed by special warehousing software, and after packaging, according to the customer's address, it will be determined how the product will be delivered to the customer. When we chat with the founder brothers of Digikala outside the company tour, it is clear that they believe that they are just beginning and need to develop: "Our serious focus is on the product and technology sectors, and we intend to bring the best talents to Digikala with any mechanism and price. . From our point of view, DigiKala can be the symbol of web technology in Iran and it is the best environment for anyone to work with any specialty that DigiKala needs." According to Saeed, reaching an external investor has little to do with changing the company's thirst for development. Help in Digikala. We believe that the Sarawa collection was and still is of the same type. For Digikala, Sarava plays more of a helping role in the growth process than a mere investor." In the words they say about their obsession for the entry of a new investor, you can really see the rejection of these sensitivities: "We still see that there are traditional ways of thinking about company management, and in our opinion, one of the main reasons is that IT companies are formed and actually suffer after some time. decline, is that they do not have much desire to follow the international formulas that have worked and correspond to the growth process. There are many IT companies whose board meetings and assemblies revolve around the discussion of profitability; How much profit we made last year or how much profit we will make next year, this kind of view is not suitable for the growth and development of startups in the field of IT. Of course, it should be mentioned that the main reason for this issue is that maybe there is no economic stability in the recent economic environment and no one is willing to sell cash on credit and sacrifice profit for the future. They strongly reject the attractiveness of the physical store, and their reasoning is based on experience: "Selling in a physical space is in complete conflict with our strategies, because the spirit of online digital goods and its culture is a modern business culture, and these will never reconcile with each other." did If we want to add a product to the sale list on the site, we will definitely offer it as a digital product. When I say digital goods, I mean that content plays a prominent role in it, and the role of digital goods shopping assistant will continue to be maintained in those groups. The spirit of the store in the group of two of them means the same as their sacred respect for the customer. In this regard, Hamid points to some statistics and says: "The resources that we plan to spend on the development of digital goods will be very important in the areas of increasing the quality of the customer experience, and I can say that more than half of the resources of digital goods in The next year or two will be devoted to increasing the quality of the customer experience." They do not show weakness at all about not having an application or a mobile presence and they believe that Digikala has never been a surfer: "We see many companies that enter some new paradigms of technology. For example, we see this trend a lot in the case of mobile applications. What has happened in Iran in the field of mobile phones is that in many places companies have entered this field without studying. A major part of the entry of companies into the mobile discussion is actually a reaction that they simply wanted to have because of their presence in this space. In the end, I must say that the mobile application and new acceptable payment methods will be launched soon. After having a cup of tea in the conference room, we joined Mehdi Rezaei to compare the processes with Mohammadi's statements. We had also seen Rezaei in the Arsbaran building, but when we saw him in the processing center, we realized that as the manager of this department, he has a heavy duty: "In this center, we have 5,000 meters of warehouse space and, in total, about 1,000 meters of office space. There is. "Each product gets a unique serial number and after the order is confirmed, it goes to the packaging department to be sent to the desired address." The packages of Shahristan and Tehran are completely different and 60 motorcyclists work directly with Digikala to cover different areas of Tehran, which make up Digikala's logistics. And that's why we use stronger packaging for orders related to cities." Bulky and smaller goods are neatly separated from each other, and you can easily understand what each group is doing with large colored boards that mark each section. In total, there are always at least 20,000 goods in the warehouse at the same time, 10,000 of which are in circulation. Most of the work is done mechanized, and the conveyor that connects the two sides of the factory longitudinally, carries out the work of moving the goods. After visiting the process of ordering and supplying the goods, we also look at the colorful restaurant and the glass walls of the complex to get closer to one of the most important assets of Digikala, which holds the title of the heart for them: the content production unit. One of the most interesting features of this building is the location of the two operator and content production departments next to each other. Before we came to this part of Digikala, we heard from the Mohammadi brothers that the content production unit is located next to the operator, and it seemed to me that there was not a suitable space for content production and editorial, but when we entered the building and saw their work environment, we were really amazed. ; A very orderly, stylish and clean space and at the closest point to the new products, which provides more opportunities for digital goods writers and photographers to explore, by the way, the main reason for the presence of the content unit here is the easier and more accessible access to the goods. Although the two departments of the operator and the content definitely have two different organizational cultures, but with the good design that was done, it seems that this category does not create a problem for the employees and the collection. All content on the Digikala website about products is the result of this unit's efforts. The content production unit consists of two parts; One is the production of written content and the other is the studio that does photography and film production for Digikala TV. In total, there are 21 of them, 14 of whom are engaged in photography and graphic work in the editorial department and seven in the studio. For goods and sometimes even different brands, tasks are categorized and it is clear who should take the trouble to write what goods or what brand. Saeed Rahmani is the CEO of Siravast Company; A company specialized in investing in IT startups. Sarawa's work and investment area is summarized in three factors: firstly, all new businesses that operate in the field of internet and mobile, secondly, their entrepreneurs are Iranian, and thirdly, their idea makers and executive team have a high ability to grow in their work. He considers himself more of an entrepreneur than a mere investor. He has worked for more than three decades in the countries of America, England, Holland, China and India in well-known companies in the field of information technology. IBM is one of the famous companies where he has worked and his last work experience at the international level was Irdeto, a subsidiary of Nespers, where he worked as the senior vice president of the CEO. It seems that his work life has a direct relationship with the growth of the Internet in different countries and regions of the world, and his words confirm the same feeling: "Two or three years ago, when we started the Sarava project, at first, we did a deep investigation on the web and the market. We conducted internet businesses in Iran and tried to identify teams that were active in entrepreneurship in the field of information technology. I must say that we are actually investing in a startup team, not a company. In 1990, when I met Saeed and Hamid Mohammadi, I felt that they are a good team to invest in, and that Saeed and Hamid have the necessary focus, experience, and personality to make entrepreneurs successful. In short, in my opinion, they had the DNA to become an entrepreneur and gave me the best trust for cooperation. After getting to know and fully evaluating Digikala, I realized that Digikala is the best place to invest, of course, if I want to say it more correctly, I must say that the founders of Digikala were the best option for investment." He believes that Digikala's startup model can be extended to other entrepreneurial teams in Iran: "Our goal is to empower entrepreneurial teams, and in other sectors of the modern internet and mobile economy, there are other teams that are working hard and we are trying to We will help them to walk this way." He believes that Digikala has gone through its formation stage and is transitioning from the middle stage to the stage of organizational growth, and in 2013, the most important issue for them is attracting and maintaining human resources: "Last year, the most important issue for Digikala was branding strategy, but this year The most important issue is the recruitment and retention of human resources, followed by financial issues and then legal issues, which become more important." Rahmani believes that investment may sometimes ruin a business: "If being rich made someone an entrepreneur, now all rich kids should become entrepreneurs. The time of capital injection into a business is very important, but investment must be made at that time, and in Digikala, this investment is being used for its expansion and development. We get to know more about Shahroz Chorakchi and Farhang Heshmati in editorial. Of course, we try not to disturb them in their work environment, and as a result, at the suggestion of the Mohammadi brothers, we move to the conference room again and have a short chat with them. They are very comfortable in the presence of their managers, and Hashmati's culture has more humor and his body language adds to the effect of this humor: "We try to be as fair as possible about products, and we are obviously more sensitive about expensive products in writing, and we try to We will challenge them more, because the customer wants to pay a lot of money for these types of products and he has the right to read and know about them more and more accurately and at the same time more critically." Shahroz Charakchi is well-spoken, and while talking to us, a smile does not leave his lips, and he says about writing about different products and their difficulty and ease: "For example, writing about the latest Samsung phone model is not difficult, but writing about products is simple and obvious. It is very difficult. For example, writing about a hair straightener or a mobile bag is a very difficult task, and the simpler the products, the harder it is to write about them, because there is practically nothing to write about them. They told us about writing about hair irons and mobile bags to writing about refrigerators and washing machines: "Sometimes we can't find pictures of some of these products even on the website of manufacturers like LG, and sometimes after examining the product, we find out what is written on their website. It does not fit with reality; These are some of our challenges in writing for different products."
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