Entrepreneurship

Young entrepreneurs come up with Iftaar home delivery service this Ramadan

In a first, young entrepreneurs from Kashmir have come up with an “Iftaar Ze’an” (Iftaar basket) a fruit package that can be delivered at your doorsteps during the coming holy month of Ramadan.

Kartfood, a home delivery service company, in collaboration with Captivating Kashmir, a social media and digital marketing set-up, has designed three fruit baskets ranging from Rs 499 to Rs 999, promising to deliver ‘A-Grade quality fruits’ to their subscribers at cheaper rates.

Furqan Qureshi, CEO Kartfood, says that their target would be business and working members of the society who have a hectic work schedule.

“I approached Captivating Kashmir and we collaborated,” says Furqan. The team consists of Nihal Rehman, Co-founder and CEO of Captivating Kashmir, who is handling the Operations and Marketing; Fasahat from Captivating Kashmir, who handles accounts and Zaid,  who takes care of the Customer services.

“We will also have 5 to 6 interns for calling, orders and other purposes,” he says.

The real ’cause’ for them is to make entrepreneurship contagious in Kashmir. “If you want an economic reformation in Kashmir, you have to make entrepreneurship contagious by collaborating with people,” says Nihal.

What’s in the Basket

The service package comes with three Ze’ans (baskets), which actually won’t be baskets but regular carton boxes. The contents of the basket are such that, Nihal says, that it will last for at least 2 days.

“It depends on your family strength. A family with four people can use a basket for three days,” he says adding that thus, they shall be delivering the fruits twice a week only.

On the face of it, the baskets cost Rs. 499, Rs 699 and Rs 999. When the reporter went around the market, producing the basic basket wouldn’t cost more than Rs 300, and one thinks that the claim of the team to provide the fruit at cheaper rates is false, but that is not the case.

“There are quality grades in fruits. But after we conducted a survey, we found out the fruits in the market are B-grade fruits. A-grade fruits are expensive and they are not readily available in the market.”

“The watermelon, for example, has many qualities. The ones you buy from the market, are bought by the dealers for around 20 to 25 rupees and sold to you at 30 rupees. But the ones we are buying are of good quality. We buy it at 30 rupees itself and we are buying in bulk. We are buying 6 tons altogether and still buying one piece for 30 rupees. It is the same for bananas and other fruits,” Furqan explains.

“We are getting Basil seeds for around 180 to 190 rupees per kg. The packets available in the market that come for rupees 10 or 20 are of the worst quality. That is manufactured at the cost of 5 rupees and then sold for around 10 to 20 rupees, according to our survey. We are getting the seeds from Kashmir box that sells it online. Those are quality basil seed,” claims Furqan according to whom, they “could not find any place in the market where good quality fruit is sold.”

“The kind of kiwi fruits available in Kashmir are Iranian which are sour in taste. But a good quality Kiwi is from New Zealand. That costs Rs 50 per piece. It’s also expensive and rare to find. In our Rs 999 basket, we have kept four such pieces, that means we have spent Rs 200 rupees on Kiwis alone,” added Furqan who wants to expand the customer base for Kart food and captivating Kashmir.

To ensure customer satisfaction, they said that they have set a criterion. In case a customer feels the fruit is not up to the mark, he/she can return the basket at that time and get a refund. After that, the customer will also get another basket for the day and will not have to pay anything.

“In case of a no profit no loss situation, we won’t be having any issues. We would still be happy to deliver quality fruits to people in Ramadan. We are restricting the number of subscriptions. It would be 300 people only. So far we have reached 30 subscriptions,” says Nihal, who is a Civil Engineer with a passion for photography.

“We have more than 50,000 SMS in stock. We would be using them to communicate with the customers,” he said adding that people can subscribe via Paytm or avail the facility of bank transfers.

“You would have to pay Rs 199 which will be completely refundable,” says Nihal adding that the delivery charges per delivery would cost Rs 50.

 

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