Editorial Desk :
In only two years and a half, the founder of Evaly handled billions of taka to build their e-commerce platform as one of the largest in the country. According to media reports on Friday, Evaly grew on advances taken from customers against its promise to deliver products at much less prices on dates that it only deferred, keeping hundreds of thousands of customers waiting for products. It also caused payments of hundreds of sellers of products to the platform on credit to get stuck.
Evaly founder and Managing Director Mohammad Rassel and his wife and Chairman of the platform, now a three-day remand, were arrested by RAB on Thursday afternoon following a case filed by one of their millions of defaulted customers. Thousands of customers are now worried whether they would get back their money or products they had paid for. RAB officials told a press briefing on Friday that the e-commerce firm has liabilities of over Tk 1,000 crore it owes to its customers.
What a surprising rise of this e-commerce platform? Rassel, a former bank
official, opened the e-commerce platform Evaly on December 16, 2018. With free gifts for registering as a customer, and offers of up to several hundred percent cashbacks it did not take much time to lure people to opt for making advance payments for Evaly products. Unbelievable discounts on large products, including motorcycles, electronics and appliances only led to an increase in numbers of its customers. Aspirant middle-class youths rushed to the Evaly for their dream motorcycles, families ordered home appliances and electronics products matching their needs and abilities.
It is surprising to many how so many prominent business concerns like Bata Shoe, Apex Footwear, electronics and two-wheeler manufacturer Jamuna Group, Samsung electronics and Hyundai car distribution Fair Group, beverage giant Coca-Cola and several other large local consumer item brands made the same mistake as they registered with Evaly to sell on revolving supplier’s credit.
Following an August 2020 media report on Evaly’s practices to default in delivery time, the Bangladesh Bank froze bank accounts of Evaly and its founder. This action is the easiest. But allegedly defrauded huge amount of money must be recovered. Otherwise, the case will be used for another kind of corruption for another set of people.
