Heyday for virtual mango market

Online platforms selling seasonal fruits, particularly the prime summer fruit mango, are in their heydays with the beginning of the Bengali month of Jaistha, popularly known as Madhumas or the month of juicy fruits starting from mid-May.

Wide varieties of juicy fruits mostly mango, lychee, and jackfruit have started hitting the market across the country.

With increased trend of online dealings, traders are using multiple online communication tools like e-commerce portals, Facebook, WhatsApp, Vibre, Imo and voice calls for selling mangoes online, creating a virtual mango market.

Alongside local markets and super shops entrepreneurs, several thousand young entrepreneurs, mostly university students and unemployed people, have been involved in the brisk mango business that lasts for three to four months between May and August.

Although mangoes grow everywhere in Bangladesh but the mangoes from Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj, Satkhira and Dinajpur are now reaching all over the country as they ripe earlier.

Online mango traders said Himsagar and Govindabhog of Satkhira, Rajbhog and Gopalbhog of Rajshahi have already hit the market while Khirshapati and Langra of Chapainawabganj are coming out at a small scale.

Some other popular varieties of mango like Fazli, Langra, Khirsapat, Himsagar, Amrapali, Ashwina, Gopalbogh, Khirmon etc are expected to reach out every location in the country within next 15 to 20 days.

Hasanuzzman, who works for a Dhaka-based private company, said “I love to have mangoes at the very onset of the season. I know few traders who deal with Rajshahi mangoes during the season. I feel comfortable buying from known traders to be sure that the mangoes are of good quality and anything toxic is used on them.”

Online traders are now passing their busy hours to get prepared to tackle the growing pressure of demands.

They are taking orders online at the same time collecting mangoes from different orchards and carefully packing up the perishable fruits and instantly delivering those on buses, trucks or personal vehicles, courier services.

Hafizur Rahman, a Dhaka University student, said he along with one of his friends in Rajshahi have been doing mango business for the past four years after the completion of their bachelor’s.

“Around a month ago, we began updating mango situation from our orchards live on Facebook from our personal accounts and our page named e-bagan and people have started ordering recently. We have started delivering the Gopalbhog variety on May 23. Per kg mango costs Tk 110 in Dhaka while Tk 115 outside Dhaka”, he said.

Hafiz said they can deliver 15-20 mounds mangoes to the capital a day. He hopes that they will be able to sell 400-500 mounds of mangoes in next three months.

Ashik Abdullah, owner and CEO of fozli.com said, they have started taking orders and delivery Govindabhog mango straight from Satkhira as those ones ripe earlier than those of Rajshahi.

“We are reaching mangoes to 52 locations in Dhaka supply those on cash-on-delivery basis with our own transports. Alongside, we are taking online orders from 62 districts on advance payment and delivering through courier services,” he said.

“As fozli.com is celebrating 10 years of its launching, we are offering discounts for our customers based on the locations and amount of mangoes they purchase from us”, Abdullah added.

He said they also operate various online platforms like fozli.com, rajshahimango.com, aambazar.com alongside a number of Facebook pages and groups, YouTube channel and their own mobile app to reach maximum number of customers.

This year mango production is not up to the mark compared to previous years. Sales of the popular fruit have just started so the price is relatively high, said Ashik hoping that they will be able to sell 1,000-1,500 tonnes of mangoes across the country this season.

With times the price will go down as within a month the mangoes of Chapainawabganj will ripe and come to the market, he added.

Ashik said all the online sellers of mangoes have some premium customers and they offer special services for them like special types of packaging, discounts and best possible collections, hoping bigger deals in future.

The sellers said the price of mangoes from Chapainawabganj and Rajshahi will go down at growers end around second week of June as most of the mangoes will ripe by the time the growers and wholesalers will vacate their stores.