As Nepal undergoes further lockdown period, the Nepal government has put forward a major step to launch a first governmental online shopping portal. Before this, a few e-commerce sites carried out home delivery even during the lockdown with the permission of the Nepal government. Many stores like Bhatbhateni, Salesways and e-commerce sites such as Sastodeal, Kirana, Foodmandu, Thulo are operating to provide foods, groceries, and other essentials to the people with proper precautions. Read more for the currently available online home delivery sites in the lockdown.
Nepal Government has never felt the need to initiate an online shopping site before but an existential crisis has taken place due to the coronavirus pandemic. People are having trouble getting food each day and being secured. Nepal government will be offering assistance to the needy people who are unable to obtain food products due to lockdown.
Government eCommerce Website
Food management and Trading Company Ltd. is a merged venture between Nepal Food corporation and National Trading. This single entity is a Nepal government registered company, which will be operating as an online e-commerce site to provide foods and groceries directly to the home of consumers. It has started taking orders and delivering food and grocery products to the doorstep from Wednesday.
The e-commerce site opens with the link nepalfood.gov.np which is developed by Pasls. It has a simple layout that doesn’t look much impressive. The homepage displays an important message about their operating.
The company will be providing a home delivery facility within Kathmandu valley only. The order has to be of the minimum worth of Nrs. 2,000 to be accepted as order by the company. To stop people from hoarding, they have also set the maximum amount of shopping as Rs 5000 for now.
They claim to make the delivery within a day after the confirmation. Food will be only delivered at your doorstep if you reside within ring road of Kathmandu. The website has limited food products like rice and beans as options for now. The price and weight of the goods are also mentioned on the website.
There are not many features on the website to be explored. This website is new and under construction, so they might soon add other stuff on the website.
Read: How Nepali tech companies are tackling COVID-19?
Objective
Food management and Trading Company Ltd. has been introduced mainly to serve the people. The aim is to reduce the scarcity of food and groceries. To make sure people don’t have to sleep empty stomach, this website has been created. This online store would want to make sure the farmer’s production doesn’t go to waste due to lockdown since agriculture is the main source of our income. The e-commerce activities will be operated with the use of limited sources.
The company aims to provide quality food and products and follows the Consumer Protection Act of 2075. The company also intends to expand network with international companies.
Payment system
The company accepts online payment only with three options: the Khalti app, Fonepay, and eSewa. Instead of handing money, you can simply pay for the goods via these online payment systems of Nepal. As a safety measure, paying via online payment platform is safe and recommended during coronavirus pandemic. Find the top digital payment providers in Nepal.
What is Pasls?
Pasls is a SaaS (Software as a service) platform that provides e-commerce as a service. The service is useful to create an online store in minimal time and money. It helps you to initiate an online business with zero investment. No hassle of developing a new website for your business which costs over 2-3 lakhs and that is a huge investment to start.
Using SaaS is like renting a room. You pay rent monthly or annually. You pay till you stay and you can leave the room at any time. The same is with Pasls. It gives a platform for a business to go online. You pay the charge either monthly or annually for a custom domain. You can cancel your online store anytime you want. After cancellation, you do not have to pay further. Another attractive feature of Pasls is that the online store can be created within 5 minutes. We recommend you reach out to them to start your own online shopping site.
Food management and Trading Company Ltd. used the service of this platform to create an online store without huge investments. The website also needed to go live instantly due to a crisis situation. So Pasls appeared to be one of the best options for Food management and Trading Company Ltd.
Conclusion
Food management and Trading Company Ltd. is an official governmental online shopping website that has been developed to provide food and groceries to people with a home delivery facility. The web application is not yet available as a phone app but they may come up with an app if needed.
We recommend you to Read Top online shopping sites in Nepal.
We would like to appreciate Government (at least the Food Management company) to come up with the official eCommerce website, using SaaS technology that delivered in a very short period of time. Obviously, the layout and other details will keep on improving, but the website needs to deliver the Food needs in this challenging situation. We also see greater potential of the government’s entry in online Food supplies even after the lockdown.
