In a bid to tackle the threat posed by e-commerce sites to small traders, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has launched a portal ‘e-lala’ on Monday.

Inaugurating the portal, Minister of Urban Development M Venkaiah Naidu said that global threat from e-commerce to small traders could be addressed by leveraging digital technology under the initiative, which needs to have proper outreach and marketing strategies.

MasterCard and HDFC Bank have partnered with the portal to provide digital payment solutions.

The portal allows only those merchants who have a physical presence through brick and mortar stores to become sellers. Each seller on the portal will have his own inbuilt Web site and a payment gateway is embodied in the portal to facilitate online payments. Consumers can make payments online or at the physical stores.

Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General, CAIT, said, “We launched a pilot on November 5 in Nagpur. We are aiming to have 50,000 sellers on the portal across 100 towns by March 2016.” He said with nearly 5.77 crore small traders in the country, the portal will serve as an interface between traders and consumers.

He said that in every city a technical team will be stationed to supervise the business and trade associations across the country will be an integral part. “Local trade associations of different cities will be roped in a structured manner to promote e-lala portal among their members and the public,” he added.

e-lala will have a speciality corner promoting unique products associated with each city, an enquiry corner that enables consumers to post their enquiries for a particular product to which response will be given in 24 hours and an artisans’ corner for artisans and entrepreneurs to display their products.

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