The modern way to barter !

In an exclusive conversation with Retailer Media , the founders of Faida.com: Gaurav Jain and  Vipul Paliwal shared their  views about their brand .

As competition in the ecommerce sector has increased with time, so startup companies experiment with various ideas, tell us about Faida.com's journey so far?

Faida.com  was founded by Gaurav Jain and  VipulPaliwal with a vision to offer a win-win experience to its consumers/users through a unique market place model. We chose the name Faida as it means benefit for everyone. Gaurav is the brain behind this unique concept. While he was in America, Gaurav realized that unlike in the US, Indians are much more attached to their stuff and seldom throw it away. It is here that the old concept of barter came to his mind. This would help us declutter our homes and exchange stuff we don’t need and at the same time helps recycling and have something we need in exchange.

The idea of your portal is new and unique, so how do you maintain the authenticity of consumers who register?

Faida works in the following way:
You have to list your unwanted items at Faida.com. Then select item/items of your interest offered by another user. You then send an exchange request to that user. When your request is accepted, meet them up and inspect each other’s items, Exchange or reject items. We advise our customers to exchange within the city to ensure that both sides meet each other and ensure that they are getting what they need.

Tell us about your revenue model, as Faida.com is all about exchanging products?

Currently there is no specific revenue model in place, but once we get enough traction, we will be looking at Featured Listings and Ad Spaces.

As a startup where do you see your brand in five years down the line?

Faida.com was founded in the March 2015 and so far, we have been going as per plans. We are continuously improving our UI based on user feedback and introducing many new features in the site, like chat and online help. We are receiving good traffic everyday on the website, besides items listed are 28295, Interest shown 36234 and offers made is 15070. We shall also be coming up with our app in a week’s time.

Do you have plans to venture into more categories through your portal?

Right now we are only focusing on C2C categories, but in future we plan to open B2C & B2B categories as well.

Who according to you are your competitors and what are your strategies to deal with that?

Yes, there are a few websites which work on bartering but Faida.com works on a different platform. Faida has many features to attract its users. These features make bartering easy and convenient. The chat feature allows one to chat with people who want to exchange; Locality search which helps you to find what is available near you. Beside this the website has recommendations, most popular products and also Hot products to make exchange feasible.

How much traffic do you get on a daily basis, any plans to attract more customers?

We are receiving good traffic on daily of 325 to 350 customers.  We are using different marketing strategies to attract our customers and to make our customers aware of the brand.

What are your expansion plans for this fiscal?

Right now we are operating in 6 cities; plan to expand in 20 cities within the next 6 months.