 "Once a Facebook group, a bartering startup rises in cashless India")
The business launched apps for Android and iOS in September this year. Its users are concentrated in Delhi but span pan-India.
Through Let’s Barter’s Facebook page and app, customers can offer to trade items like electronics, gaming products, and books, as well as services like accounting, bookkeeping, and cooking.
Other bartering sites include Gurgaon-based BarterDaddy and Jaipur-based Faida. Online flea market Yappily has a similar commerce-between-customers model, bringing more socialisation into e-commerce. Customers still exchange money, however.
From hobby to startup
Let’s Barter’s Facebook group – now at over 185,000 members – operates simply: people post things that they’re willing to exchange and work out what they’re willing to take for them in the comments.
Let’s Barter’s five-member team, including app designer and CTO Abhishek Biswal, works out of an Innov8 coworking space. The startup secured funding this September, and the company has yet to make revenue.
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That’s where the new apps come in. Big bartering fans will be able to access services like delivery to different cities and verification of sellers through a premium model. The company also wants to introduce an in-app currency to app bartering, as well as organised user reviews.
Making noise
In response to demonetisation – a government push to go cashless and clear out black money – people in rural cities unable to quickly get new cash turned to bartering in a pinch to meet their needs. Though many in India’s cities were able to pay for the majority of goods and services through cashless means, bartering emerged as a viable method as well in India’s capital.