I have an abnormal morning routine to which I have been religious to for a couple of years now. I wake up at 4 am and get myself out of the house by 5 am for school. An hour just to get ready? Not really. So what do I do in that time frame? I shop online. I do very much love me some shopping, almost to a dangerously addictive level. But I am okay with it, as long as I have sudrz.com on the top of my bookmarks list. I came across this site a year ago when I realized that I needed a new pair of shoes. I wanted me a pair of Vans specifically and I landed on the mentioned website. I was new here, and from the very first impression, I was impressed with the interface and selection. So I made the jump.

Then I get a call at 12 pm. “Hello, this is Sudrz, when can we make the delivery?”

I huh-ed because I wasn’t sure. This confusing exchange of dialogue went on for a bit regardless of of how clear the reception was. I just couldn’t believed what I was hearing. See, my previous relationship with online shopping has been not that great. I ordered something, would get a call from them a couple of days after just to make sure that I had ordered it or nah, then have it delivered to me a week after, by which I would have already forgotten what I had ordered. Some would say that it would be like receiving a gift, but it ain’t a gift if you’re paying for it; it’s just sucky service! Sudrz? Far from it. Lightyears.

Long story short, those shoes arrived by 2pm. I have not been successful at relocating my jaw after this, but my wallet has been faithful to them, and the 200+ brands and 7000+ items they proudly house. It just is an honor for me to meet Ram Kumar Baniya, the man behind my favorite bookmark.

HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH A NOTION TO START AN ONLINE STORE?

Four years back, I was a frequent online shopper. Going to the shops just seems like a tedious chore to me and with the sites that were available then, I did not get my money’s worth. I would spend a thousand and a half or a couple on a tshirt and with in two days it would frey, or something order was far from the picture that was shown in the site. I was basically tired of the cheap stuff and poor service, so wished for a place that offered just branded items. Then, I thought that it’d be best to make one rather than just to wish for one.

So, on a trip to India, I met a friend of mine who had an e-commerce site and he encouraged me to bring it to Nepal, like a franchise. I did not like that idea that much, and from there, we thought of starting my own e-commerce site. And that’s how Sudrz came into being. HOW DID YOU GATHER THE TEAM? Well, it just fell into place. A partner and me were developing it, and after he left for Qatar I was working alone. Then the guys in the team knew I was working on this, so they just tagged along.

HOW DID THE NAME COME TO BE?

When we started out, we were brainstorming on what kind of an ecommerce site to be. Since the fashion and lifestyle sector was not very prominent online, we thought it’d be beneficial to have a go over there. That was just a part of the problem. Part II was to find a name, and boy did we look for one. Someone came up with stuff like “Jaam Kinam” and what not. I was looking for Spanish and French names and eventually, I came to Sanskrit. There’s a word called Sudrisya, which means ‘good looking’. The contraction of it is Sudrz, and that is our name now.

WHAT OBSTACLES DID YOU FACE WHILE YOU WERE STARTING?

To be honest, I have no background that favors a career in IT or ecommerce, I just wanted to do something like this. So having no knowledge about it, gathering a team was a must, and that too was a hard thing to do. Establishing the various departments and putting people in them took me some six months. Then along the way, I was educating myself, especially on the coding language of React. We wanted to make a single page application that was easy and fast, so we gave it to a brother of mine.

Then, seven days prior to the launch of the site, the whole language completely changed and became a whole lot messy. Fortunately, I met a guy from Ekbana Solutions who said he could make a site in seven day based on the language oo PHP. The problems didn’t end there for I did not know anything. But after tackling them one by one, I guess that we made it. We had a lot of resources, such as Amazon and Flipkart, and we adopted all the good features from them.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE TO YOU?

With the rate of how the internet is growing and is making its way into the lives of the people, e-commerce is the future. More and more people are starting to make a business and go online with their brand name. So it definitely going to be huge. Who knows, maybe the future will hold a whole new way of shopping, but then again, by the way it’s going at the moment, e-commerce is promising.

WHAT SETS SUDRZ APART FROM THE REST?

Our primary concern with all of the products we deal with is the genuineness of it. If a customer complains about a product being a copy, or one of those “high copies”, we get it back from them with a issue full refund with an apology letter from the dealer, and then we stop working with that dealer. When we promise quality, we don’t want to deliver any less.

We have a high customer satisfaction rate to back this up. (As a loyal customer, I love this part the most about them.) Also, we are not just a platform for selling. We are a hub for brands and entrepreneurs to showcase themselves and their name. Along with international brands, we feature Nepali brands that are consistent with their high quality. And we do our best to make the deliveries on the day we get them.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

Soon enough, we hope to launch a Marketplace in Sudrz. We aim this towards the ladies as they tend to not wear a dress they’ve already worn. So, this feature will allow them to sell it at a fair price. Then, we have a very exclusive part of the website where we will feature designer jewelries and clothes. We also want to start a Youtube channel to feature brands, tutorials, and DIYs. Maybe we’ll pick out people from various colleges to be our face for a month. We have various plans like that that we’re excited to initiate.

We don’t have plans to be the biggest site or anything like that, we just want to be good and consistent with it. We’ll be taking it nice and easy.

WORDS:NIRVEEK PPJ SHAH | PHOTO:PRITAM CHHETRI