Ekhanei.com was previously known as Cellbazaar, which was successful until it underwent multiple ownership changes and rebrandings. This led to customer confusion over the platform's identity and purpose. Additionally, Ekhanei.com made strategic mistakes like spending heavily on TV ads targeting the wrong audience, launching an app too slowly, and failing to effectively address customer complaints. As a result, the platform struggled to gain profits or dominate the market, ultimately leading to its overnight closure despite prior success as Cellbazaar.

2. Strategic Reasons Behind the
Failure of Ekhanei.com
Course Name : Strategic Management
Course Code : MGT6403
Group: 04
Name ID
Md. Asifur Rahaman 2123021023
Md Shariful Islam 2123021029
MD. Muniruzzaman 2123021043
Jahid Khan Rahat 2123021047
MD. Shahajalal Mia 2123021049
Prepared by:
Submitted to:
Dr. Md. Arifur Rahman
Professor
Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP)
Submission Date: 3rd April, 2023

3. Contents
1.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................................1
1.1 Why did Ekhanei.com close overnight? .................................................................................1
2.0 How Cellbazaar Became Ekhanei.com........................................................................................2
3.0 Reasons Behind the Failure of Ekhanei.com...............................................................................2
3.1 Campaign Strategies ...............................................................................................................2
3.1.1 Safe Platform...................................................................................................................2
3.1.2 Car Stickers......................................................................................................................2
3.1.3 Ethical Practices ..............................................................................................................2
3.1.4 TVC-OVC..........................................................................................................................3
3.2 Wrong Advertising Placement...............................................................................................3
3.3 Consequences of Rebranding..................................................................................................3
3.3.1 Profit Risk ........................................................................................................................4
3.3.2 Alternate Easy Options....................................................................................................4
3.4 Slow at Launching App...........................................................................................................5
3.5 False Advertisement................................................................................................................5
3.6 Customer Harassment .............................................................................................................5
3.7 Failed to Satisfy Customers ....................................................................................................5
3.9 Inefficient Management Team:...............................................................................................5
3.10 Failed to Make Profit ..............................................................................................................5
3.11 Failed to Dominate..................................................................................................................6
4.0 Major Strategic Mistake..............................................................................................................6
4.1 Rapid acquisitions...................................................................................................................6
4.2 New look new brand ...............................................................................................................6
4.3 Misconception.........................................................................................................................7
4.4 Waste of money in building new brand ..................................................................................7
5.0 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................7

4. Page | 1
1.0 Introduction
In the first half of 2006, for the first time in the country, an online platform with the idea of
selling second-hand daily or everyday products via mobile SMS, called Cellbazaar was
launched. At that time, Mr. Kamal Qadir’s idea of Cellbazaar was very unique, creative, and
innovative. He became known in Bangladesh mainly through his venture Cellbazaar.
Kamal Qadir, an MBA graduate from MIT, is an American citizen of Bangladeshi descent and
a prominent entrepreneur, who helped develop bKash and is currently the CEO of bKash.
Cellbazaar was developed under MIT Media Lab. Soon after launching the site, it gained
immense popularity in the country. Until August 2015, it was the top shopping site in
Bangladesh in the Alexa ranking and the fifth on the business and economy site.
1.1 Why did Ekhanei.com close overnight?
Cellbazaar and Ekhanei.com have changed ownership several times. When Grameenphone
Limited took over, the name ws Grameenphone CellBazaar. With Grameenphone at the helm,
the company won two awards in the next two years, Tech Award in 2007 and GSM Global
Mobile Awards in 2008. Later, in 2010, Cellbazaar was bought by GrameenPhone parent
company, the Norwegian multinational company “Telenor ASA”. In the same year, Kamal
Qadir resigned from the post of CEO of Cellbazaar and joined another successful venture,
Bikash Limited. At that time, the user base of the Cellbazaar was more than 4 million.
Shylendra Nathan, a former Google official, was appointed CEO of the company from mid-
2015 to the end. Since it was owned by GP and later Telenor, until 2011-13 it was used only
as a value-added service for GP SIM users. One year later, in June 2014, the Norwegian
company Schibsted took over. In fact, Telenor’s share at the time was reduced to only 33.3%
as Telenor, Naspar, and Schibsted bought Cellbazaar in three equal parts.

5. Page | 2
In the same year, it merged with rival OLX.com, whose parent company, NASPERS, had a
one-third stake in Cellbazaar. At that time, the company had 70 employees. And the number
of ad posts per week in the year of closure was 10 thousand – 12 thousand.
2.0 How Cellbazaar Became Ekhanei.com
After the Schibsted takeover, the Cellbazaar was rebranded as “Ekhanei.com”. Which created
confusion over what kind of service was being offered under the new name. On top of that,
there was already an e-commerce site called ekhoni.com in the market at that time which later
became Bagdum.com. So, rebranding in such a confusing name was undoubtedly suicidal for
Ekhanei.com.
Its collapse is a tragic accident in the history of Bangladesh’s classified marketplace.
Cellbazaar.com was the 2nd online marketplace in the country (the first was “ClickBD”)
Cellbazar was owned by a powerful and experienced company like GP-Telenor. With a great
track record in business along with enough time, human resources, financial resources,
infrastructure, a thriving business and marketing team, etc.
3.0 Reasons Behind the Failure of Ekhanei.com
3.1 Campaign Strategies
Coming to that point in a bit, but before let’s talk about some of the successful campaigns the
company has had.
3.1.1 Safe Platform
Safe platform for posting ads – that’s what they were most outspoken about because everyone
was concerned about security when buying and selling goods by meeting strangers directly.
That’s why they added the word safe to make communication stand out. To support it, they
started communicating various benefits including verified profile, user safety, manual number
verification, etc.
3.1.2 Car Stickers
Another successful advertising method was car stickers! They introduced the first car sticker
in Dhaka city as an advertisement on any website. Since then, the trend has grown rapidly
among other online service providers.
3.1.3 Ethical Practices
However, in terms of policy practice, Ekhanei.com was ahead of the main competition
Bikroy.com. Used medical equipment, illegal items, electric cigarettes, sex toys, rare animals
(which were officially criminal offenses to sell) – Ekhanei.com’s huge moderation team strictly
moderated all ads. There was no ban on advertising such products on Bikroy.com. There were
even numerous allegations against them of selling stolen motorbikes.

6. Page | 3
3.1.4 TVC-OVC
In 2014, Asiatic JWT, one of the best ad firms in the country, made several TVC-OVCs and
promoted ekhanei.com on various TV channels and social media, and its audio version was
also broadcast on popular radio shows in the country! Of all the video commercials Asiatic
made the best for Ekhnaei dot com, the most popular are Pratik-Yashner TVCs. It was directed
by Mostafa Sarwar Farooqi, starring popular actor and managing director of Asiatic Iresh Jaker,
and model Maria Noor. At that time, their TVC sequel created hype in the world of TV
entertainment. Probably no other classified ad-platform TVC has gained so much popularity in
the history of Bangladesh.
3.2 Wrong Advertising Placement
First of all, Ekhanei.com made a mistake in targeting their TG. Any e-commerce or online
classified has a target audience online, TV viewers are not supposed to be their target audience.
But, Ekhanei.com’s campaign budget was much higher on TV than online. For Brand
Awareness, it was reasonable for them to spend the biggest budget on digital marketing with a
small budget on TVC. But, instead of doing that, they have invested a huge amount of money
to make TVC, through which the company did get brand awareness, but the revenue had not
increased relatively.
3.3 Consequences of Rebranding
Cellbazaar had a distinct brand value and customer base. But because of the new name and
new theme, most of the users think that it is a new competitor of “Cellbazaar” in the market.
Even the fact that the previous Cellbazaar has been transformed into the current “Ekhanei.com”
was not well understood in their campaign. As a result, both the old brand value and the
customer base have been lost; on the other hand, the image of the new brand could not form in
the same way, even though they spent crores of taka on rebranding. Basically, the decline began
after this rebranding.,

7. Page | 4
Although they had reasons for rebranding and the 2 primary reasons behind the rebranding are
discussed below:
The first is that the in-house market survey they conducted before the rebranding showed that
people prefer local names to foreign ones. So, they wanted to brand it with a new Bengali word
with a new name so that the domestic customers could strongly relate to this new brand. The
second is that from the beginning, the target audience of the Cellbazaar was the users using cell
or mobile phones, hence the name Cellbazaar. But, later they wanted to come out of this idea
and widen the range of their TGs, which use not only mobiles but also computers. So, a new
name was needed that would not address any specific device users.
3.3.1 Profit Risk
Already a huge amount of investment has been made by Ekhanei.com, from which it is natural
for any company to decide not to invest a single penny in a place where the company was in
uncertainty about how much return on investment can be obtained. Although Telenor and the
other two partners with them had no profit planning until then.
3.3.2 Alternate Easy Options
In 2015, Facebook introduced product selling features in their groups. Needless to say the rest,
however even then, they did not give up and started promoting their content in various
Facebook groups. Probably many people remember that at that time, when they entered many
buying-selling groups, they would see the advertisement of Ekhanei.com in the cover photo of
the group.

8. Page | 5
3.4 Slow at Launching App
Just days before the launch of Ekhanei.com’s Android app, Bikroy.com beat them to it and
launched their Android app with Chat features. As a result, Bikroy.com was gaining more
popularity as buyers and sellers could communicate with each other without sharing phone
numbers. To match that, Ekhanei stopped the launching of the Ekhanei.com app and started
adding chatting features to it. And by doing so, Ekhanei.com went backward, on the other hand,
Bikroy dot com went in the right direction.
3.5 False Advertisement
Ekhanei.com’s business promoters were accused of immoral activities. For example, they used
to post fake advertisements from fake accounts, advertise the same product more than once and
take pictures from different parts. However, after knowing this, their posts were also brought
under strict moderation.
3.6 Customer Harassment
After rebranding, the feature to register via email address were introduced. As a result, those
who had previously registered with a mobile number could no longer log in to their account,
so they had to re-open the account with a new email address. And the preexisting users’ account
information was deleted. This led to major harassment of customers. However, in 2016, they
joined Opera Mini to give customers a better mobile browsing experience.
3.7 Failed to Satisfy Customers
It was alleged that they did not take customer feedback or customer complaints seriously. Many
complained more than once about UI & UX or other technical issues but no effective solution
was found.
3.9 Inefficient Management Team:
Although the parent company was elite, the management of the subsidiary was not so efficient.
The team that used to take care of Cellbazaar, after dismissing them and taking a new team,
the management has also faced threat. Moreover, before the shutdown, the company went
through a variety of changes that made it difficult for internal staff to keep their focus properly.
3.10 Failed to Make Profit
Bikroy.com launches its services in the country under the Swedish company Saltside, an
international technology company. [That is to say, two European companies occupy the entire
classified marketplace of the country!] Besides, Bikroy.com started making money through
their services.

9. Page | 6
In 2013, that is only 1 year after, at the start of their journey to bikroy. com began monetizing
their services. Some additional convenient features were added to the site for their users, in
return for which the users had to pay some extra money. For example, for only 300-500 taka,
the seller’s post would show up on top of all the search results, and even there was a system to
keep the top post. But, even at that time, Ekhanei.com could not set up any strong business or
monetization model here.
3.11 Failed to Dominate
The first and foremost purpose of e-commerce is to be unique in the market. This is where
whenever Ekhanei.com realizes that it is no longer possible for them to be number one in the
market, they immediately close the company. Market analysts think that this is where
Ekhanei.com was forced to close overnight after losing to the then competition. Thus would be
the end of Ekhanei.com, even in case of a skyrocketing opportunity, an initiative can be ruined
only for the mistake of execution.
4.0 Major Strategic Mistake
4.1 Rapid acquisitions
The previous name of this company EkhaneIi.com was cell Bazaar. In 2006 It was started by
Kamal Kadir. After a successful Collaboration with technology Giant Grameenphone, the
company earned rapid International awards in 2007- 2008.
In 2010, Cell Bazar was bought by the parent company of grameenphone Telenor group. In
that very year Kamal Kadir resigned from the CEO post of Cell bazar and started his own
new company Bkash and still now he is CEO of Bkash. From 2011 to 2013 this website was
used as well as a website for the GP sim users. In 2014 it was taken over by Norway
company schibsted.
This Rapid change in the authority of the company, makes the company adapt with new rules
and regulations and have to come with new looks which make them a noob to the market.
4.2 New look new brand
To become a successful company a company should be in the market for a long time with the
same name and brand which eventually make them family to the market and the customer
help them to build a brand which can be trusted by the customers but here in the case of cell
Bazaar it was rapidly a acquisition by different company which put the company in new rules

10. Page | 7
regulations and have to come up with a new look new brand Which Eventually make them
new to the market.
4.3 Misconception
As the companies branded names was rapidly changing the user base and the customers
develop a misconception that it is a new company or rivalry of cell Bazar or Ekhanei.com. It
becomes more difficult day by day to be a loyal customer of Cell Bazaar As it's losing its
identity and earning another with new features, logo name and brand.
4.4 Waste of money in building new brand
Though the company is able to create successful, interesting and creative advertisement to
advertise their website or product but there wasn't a very successful number of customers
which eventually leads to a wastage of money in building the new brand.
Now in the end it has become very hard for this company to survive in the market for the
veryreason Ekhanei.com Shutdown.
5.0 Conclusion
From the above discussion we get clear idea that ekhanei.com management was very in
efficient. Their strategic decision is always proved wrong. In addition, the management was
not able to realize the future online business. However, marketing manager and finance
manager was also failed to achieve their specific goal.