For the 3 million persons of Indian origin living in the US, easy access to things from home—food, clothing, entertainment—is on top their wish list. But it has not been easy: If you work in New Jersey, there is Edison, a town that is a sort of Little India. If you live o—r work in the Bay area from San Francisco to San Jose, you are never far from Indian supermarkets and eateries. But there are many who don't enjoy this convenience in other states of the US.
For them the online market place DesiClik.com has come as a boon. The portal based in Hicksville, New York state, sources more than 10,000 products from nearly 100 vendors covering groceries, apparel, books, music and movie DVDs, as well as uniquely Indian things like ayurvedic products, traditional wedding accessories, Rakhis and Diwali diyas. If after a few years in the US you crave for the authentic taste of Haldiram namkeen or mysore pak; need puja samagri for a religious ceremony or the nostalgic aroma of Coorg coffee, DesiClik has it somewhere on its site—at competitive dollar prices. Its of products has expanded to include a broad South Asian range.
Formerly known as TheIndianBazaar.com, DesiClik is now the largest US-based e-commerce marketplace for Indian products. It was co-founded in 2014 by Deepak Agarwal and Sadhana Bothra and now caters to US based casual shoppers, Indian restaurants and Indo-US corporates looking for gifting solutions. A PayPal and Ipsos survey found that US based e-commerce sites took $ 3.9 billion from Indian buyers in 2016.
Now DesiClik is all set to extend its reach by making it easy for India-based buyers to shop with it. This flows from a growing trend that saw 10 percent of its US sales originating from India—mostly those here wanting to send gifts to friends and relatives in the US. Over 60 percent of the PIO population in the US has parents and relatives back home.
When DesiClik launches an Indian site, it will be that much simpler for India-based customers to have gifts and merchandise delivered in the US in a secure fashion—instead of cajoling friends or colleagues to carry them in their baggage, when they travel to America. Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad are the main cities from where DesiClik expects to see enhanced business.
