Chaldal was launched in 2013 with a small team, a handful of products and suppliers, and doing a small number of deliveries per day. Today, it is a different company. Chaldal delivers on-demand groceries through a network of warehouses enabled by its technology platform. The company pioneered the dark store concept in Bangladesh. Customers can select from over 15,000 different products and have them delivered within 30 minutes.
Over the past years, Chaldal has grown into the dominant player in online grocery in Bangladesh, expanded into multiple cities, and is now eyeing new verticals such as e-pharmacy.
Few players have managed to build complete category domination as Chaldal in online grocery. The company has done this across products within the universe of grocery — from fresh vegetables to pet foods to daily necessities to a long list of other products. In today’s story, we look into another product where Chaldal has become the largest online seller in Bangladesh — egg.
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Chaldal has been selling eggs since its inception in 2013. It figured that since eggs are a daily necessity for every Bangladeshi household, customers should be able to buy eggs online more easily. This goes well with the company’s core thesis that: people should not have to wait for hours in traffic or queue up to buy necessities like eggs.
Began organically in those early days, today Chaldal is probably the largest seller of eggs online, partly due to rocketing consumer demand for fresh eggs in the coronavirus era, but more importantly because of Chaldal's excellent quality eggs and service.
To give you a brief idea of how Chaldal sells eggs online, Chaldal works with selected egg suppliers to source eggs of a certain standard and quality. Customers can order — on the Chaldal website or app — based on their requirements from 6pcs onward and have it delivered at their doorsteps within the time slot of their choice. Chaldal offers 30 minutes delivery in most locations it operates, charges a BDT 9 for delivery, and offers a no-questions-asked return and refund policy for damages and quality issues. Eggs are packaged using an environmentally friendly Chaldal branded brown paper box. The company says it works hard to ensure the best quality eggs at the best possible price.
You can buy all kinds of eggs on Chaldal. Layer chicken eggs. Organic chicken eggs. Duck eggs. Quail eggs. And eggs from brands such as Purnava vitamin e eggs and Purnava omega 3 enriched eggs.
The good part of Chaldal is that everything is transparent. Customers get what they are promised. If eggs are damaged or don’t meet the quality standard promised, customers can return and get a refund within seven days.
Selling eggs online is not easy. The entire process can be a laborious task — collecting the eggs, sorting them, checking for quality, packaging, and then finally delivering to the customers.
To address the challenges, Chaldal has put together a strong supply chain, a quality control process, and a packaging and delivery system to ensure expected quality. As the business grows further, it makes sense that Chaldal will go for greater supply chain control and invest more in technology for overall processing.
In 2013, Waseem Alim, Zia Ashraf, and Tejas Viswanath founded Chaldal with the aim of bringing grocery shopping online. Online grocery shopping was a new thing in the country with seemingly endless growth prospects. However, the task was not easy. It took Chaldal some time to educate the market. In 2013, the startup was delivering just about five orders per day. It has since grown and evolved. Today, Chaldal has not only built a successful online grocery business but has also built an end-to-end grocery supply chain.
Eggs are one of the grocery items Chaldal focused on from the beginning. The company works hard to provide the best quality eggs at the most reasonable price. As a result, Chaldal’s egg business has witnessed excellent growth over the years and evolved both in scale and operation.
With an ambition to ensure farm to fork, Chaldal’s supply chain team works non-stop to manage and maintain all the steps to provide the best products to its customers. The philosophy applies to eggs as well.
Over the years, Chaldal has developed quality standards for eggs it sells, which suppliers must adhere to — such as thickness, color, size, hygiene, and other relevant specifications. Chaldal does not work with suppliers who fail to meet its quality standard.
As soon as the eggs arrive from the suppliers, the Chaldal warehouse team sorts them and evaluates their quality. Eggs that are damaged or unhygienic are discarded and never sold to customers.
Chaldal pays extreme attention to quality. "We source our eggs from reputed vendors in Bangladesh, and we thoroughly check the quality and hygiene of the eggs before we ship them," the company says in a statement.
Chaldal has taken its egg business to a new level with its quality obsession and first-mover advantage. It has mastered the supply chain and can offer reasonable prices.
Chaldal sells an average of 1,800,000 to 2,000,000 eggs per month, depending on market demand. Customers continue to appreciate the quality of its eggs, the reliability of its service, as well as the attractive offers and price benefits it provides, which means the company is likely to see further growth in the category.
Why does this matter? Eggs are important for Chaldal for two reasons. To start with, it is a big and growing market in Bangladesh. Chaldal already has a ready customer base who regularly buy eggs.
Secondly, eggs can help Chaldal attract new first-time customers. In fact, one of the reasons Chadal pays attention to products such as eggs is because it helps the company to acquire new customers. By purchasing one product online, customers become accustomed to shopping online regularly. Eventually, customers who come for eggs also buy other products from Chaldal.
Moreover, since Chaldal is in the business of demand aggregation, eggs allow the company to attract meaningful customer demands.
In Bangladesh, eggs are one of the most common sources of protein. In fact, the slogan for last year’s international egg day was: “Eat eggs every day, increase immunity".
According to a 2018 study, the chicken eggs market alone is worth 115 billion BDT in Bangladesh.
Egg consumption has also grown significantly in the country. Per household income and expenditure survey data from 2018, egg consumption increased 88 percent in six years from 2010. Bangladesh currently produces approximately 15.5 billion eggs per year.
Despite the rapid growth of the egg market, it remains underdeveloped and suffers from a host of challenges, such as insufficient storage space, improper and inadequate storage processes, lack of knowledge regarding sorting, storing, and maintenance, insufficient market research on pricing, quality, and waste management, among others. The positive thing is that growth has attracted many old and new companies who are trying to address some of these challenges.
Chaldal believes maintaining the quality of eggs and the delivery service is very important for the continued success of the egg business. To that end, Chaldal intends to become one of the leading players in the future development and growth of Bangladesh's egg market with the way it is expanding and developing its egg business.
Chaldal already has a large customer base. The company has been experiencing rapid growth and continues to invest in improving its services. With rising per capita egg consumption, Chaldal has the opportunity to grow both its eggs business and attract new customers for its other products.
