When Danish Ahmed, son of a footwear exporter, tried liquidating some blocked inventory on Rediff and eBay, he was surprised at the demand for quality footwear and that too over the Internet. Being a resident of Kanpur, Ahmed had often seen his family members travel to Delhi to purchase footwear and felt the need for a solution that could fill this gap and unlock business in the Indian footwear market. The experience on Rediff and eBay proved that there were customers in India who were willing to buy shoes online and that such a demand could be met. Targeting the Rs. 25,000 crore ($5billion) footwear market, Ahmed, in 2007, founded BigShoeBazaar.com, India’s first online shoe store.

The Indian retail market is expected to be about Rs 1,330,000 crore, growing 10.8 percent per year. Of this the organized retail was estimated to be only 5.9 percent, Rs. 78,300 crore, but the modern retail segment has grown at tremendously since 2007 at 42.4 percent per year. By 2010, the organized retail is expected to touch Rs 230,000 crore, constituting roughly 13 percent of the total retail market in India. With an innovative blend of E-commerce (B2C) and Franchisee – Retailer Distribution (B2B – OWC&C) model, BigShoeBazaar wants to target this segment and bring together demand and supply to enable business.

“India is a vast country with cities and towns every hundred kilometers. With thousands of cities and a billion consumers, it is impossible for any brand to reach out to each customer base with its products. At the same time, with growing global exposure consumers are asking for better products and demanding popular brands. The generation that spent its life in a hawai chappal has been replaced by one which has shoes for every occasion,” says Manmohan Agarwal, Director, Bigshoebazaar.com. To prove this point, Bigshoebazaar.com regularly ships its products to Onshore Drilling Sites, Tea Estates, Coffee Estates, Mining Sites, Shipyards where there is large worker population but no access to lifestyle or branded products.

There is therefore an immense amount of business that can be unlocked by giving supply to this highly potential underserved market. That is precisely what Bigshoebazaar does. It enables suppliers to reach buyers and it does that through three mediums.

Ecommerce – Through ecommerce the company is able to reach out to consumers across the countries who want to buy good quality products, which are either, not available in their area, or which they don’t have time to purchase. BigShoeBazaar.com has shipped shoes of over 70 brands to more than 1000 cities in India.