It is hard to believe that a single online shop, operating at a remote part of Chennai city is trying to create a lasting impact in the socio-economic scenario of the country. It continues to help thousands of Indians save over 84K crores collectively in the last 13 years.
Can you guess?
Yes, condombazaar.com has been creating phenomenal impact year-after-year through a simple and easy to use contraceptive, CONDOMS.
If one lists down the different methods of family planning, Using a condom is among the easiest and cheapest. Even though the government populated condoms through a massive ‘National Family Planning Program’ in the late 1960s, the condom usage in India happened at a snail’s pace. According to NFHS-4 Survey (2015-16), the condom usage among married couples was only 5.6%. The access to condoms remained a challenge as young Indian men and women had to face the embarrassment of shopkeepers or fellow buyers in a retail outlet while buying the condom. This prevented many from buying condoms.
Before the advent of online stores, men who wanted to use condoms have to wait late in the night to ensure the shop is empty and no one is around. In such a scenario, it is nearly impossible for women to buy condoms from an outlet. “The major hindrance to condom usage is the embarrassment factor involved in purchasing it”.
To address this issue, the idea of setting up condombazaar.com was born. Speaking about the idea, the condombazaar team said, “Sensing that if we can address the embarrassment factor by creating a hassle-free platform for condom purchase, most of the job is done and young Indian men and women will begin to use condoms and indulge in safe sexual practices. Thus Habituating Indians to use Condoms became the Purpose of Business for condombazaar.
To achieve this purpose, we leveraged the power of ecommerce way back in 2010 itself. Initially, we started selling condoms on ebay and the response was so encouraging. So, we started our own website – condombazaar.com in the next year itself and we were growing steadily. Traffic to the site picked up when NDTV mentioned our website name in an article“ Why Premium Condoms Risk Extinction in India” way back in 2014.”
Half of India’s population is less than 24 years of age while 65 per cent is below 35 years. To harness the opportunity of this young nation, it is important to ensure the well-being of the youth — and reproductive health is a key factor here. Sensing that we hold tremendous responsibility in assisting the young nation resort to safe sexual practices and to avoid unwanted pregnancies, we took following measures to habituate young men and women to condom usage.
Absolute privacy in condom purchase
Condombazaar may be the only player way back in 2010 selling condoms on ebay and then have a dedicated website. Condombazaar empowered the buyer by giving the total privacy and saved him/her from the embarrassing looks of the Chemist and other fellow buyers. Using the e-commerce store is a major relief and we are one step near in achieving our purpose of habituating young Indians to use condoms.
Largest Condom collection and condom usage
Condombazaar as the name suggest, has the largest range of condoms. We almost stock all brands of condoms available in India viz., Durex, KamaSutra, Moods, Skore, Manforce, Kohinoor, SKYN, Playgard, Okamato and Carex are a few to name.
Each of these brand have many variants in different pack sizes of 3’s, 6’s, 10’s, 12’s and 20’s. We try to stock almost all the variants available. The range include Delay condoms, Ribbed, dotted, Multi textured, Ultra thin, Anatomically shaped, Scented, Cooling, Warming, Non Latex, Female and Flavoured condoms. There are many flavored variants, that are far from imagination – Strawberry, Chocolate, Orange, Banana, Mango, Apple, Pineapple, Grapes, Coffee, Vanilla, Butterscotch, Paan, Blueberry, Wildberry, Litchee, Kiwi, Peach, Mint, Coffee, Bubblegum and the list goes on and in total, we have around 250 different SKUs, always in stock.
The idea of keeping a huge range is to encourage the buyer to browse the different varieties, peacefully in the privacy of his or her mobile phone and end up buying and experimenting with different varieties of condoms. Eventually, they will choose their suitable variant and form the habit of using condoms.
Invention of Discreet Packing, Delivery & Billing
Condombazaar is proud to claim that we are the first e-commerce store to use the concept of Discreet Packing and Courier delivery, way back in 2010 right from our ebay time. Though we created absolute privacy to buy condoms, we invented ‘discreet packaging’ to make the purchase even more convenient. Where, the order is discreetly shipped in a plain unmarked, and tamper-proof cover with the address of our Healthcare Company. No where will it say what the customer has purchased. The package will not be labeled with any invoices or delivery challans and the credit card/bank statement will not show our website name. This way, we ensure our customers don’t face any embarrassment at all touch points, which is a major hindrance in condom purchase.
Faster Delivery across the Country
We understand that customers hate to wait for condoms as it is always needed on emergency. To ensure faster delivery, right from the beginning, we were using express and air courier services like Bludart. If the order is placed before 3 pm of any working day, it will be shipped on the same day and most of the orders get delivered the next working day. For remote locations, we use Speed Post and we have delivered to remotest locations in Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu, Agathi Islands and to remote villages in Nilgiris.
30 condoms per order
Condombazaar has a minimum cart size of at least 30 pieces of condoms. The idea is to ensure our customers to have a ready stock of condoms at their hand’s reach, because for sexual act we cannot schedule an appointment. If condoms are available in the shelf, the couple will tend to use them every time and this will become a habit. The 30 pieces of condoms will be sufficient for a couple for atleast six month’s usage. If we can ensure a couple starts using condoms for 6 months, then it will become a habit for them.
Our Newsletter and condom usage
Over the past ten years, we have been sending newsletters month-on-month with useful information on condoms and sexual wellness to a huge email list of around 1 lakh condom users, mostly we don’t send promotional emails. For example, our newsletters will carry information like, “Flavoured condoms will cause vaginal infection due to the added sugars in the flavour”, “For men with large size, there are no condoms available, but they can make their partners use female condoms”, “how the heat transfer works while using a ultra thin condom and how couples can feel the skin on skin feel”… as these type of informations are not known to many people, we send such information to educate and thus facilitate condom usage.
Condom storage and Condom usage
From the customer feedback, we understood, that after our discreet delivery of condoms, the main problem faced by them is the storage of the condom packs. Hence we designed a black colored condom storage bag, that can be used to store condoms discretely in the wardrobe and the bag will also act as remainder for the couple to restock the condoms. The bag carries a message “Keep me always full, so that you will not get pregnant”.
Other sexual wellness products and Condom usage
Based on the request from some of our regular customers, we have added sexual wellness products and exclusive bedroom lingerie to our e-commerce platform. We also felt, these products can be bundled with condoms. Even if any of the shopping cart of our customers is filled with only sexual wellness or Lingerie, we add few packs of free condom. This category of products are driving new set of customers, to whom we have a chance to show the condom range and most of the visitor to our website who come for sexual wellness or lingerie purchase, also end up buying condoms.
Free Pregnancy Detection card with every order
No contraception can guarantee full protection, every method has a failure rate and condoms are not exception. There are two types of failures in condom. One is method failure, where in condom is broken or damaged, the other one is User failure, where in the couples who are regular users, have failed to use condoms once in a while due to various reasons. These failures may end up with an unpleasant situation for the couples, they may not know what to do further if the periods are missed or delayed. To address these embarrassing situations, we send a free pregnancy test card, with every order, which comes handy to our customers. This one idea has received a lot of appreciations from our buyers. More over, the customers are further encouraged to have confidence in condoms and the habit of condom usage is further strengthened.
With these activities, We have tried to instill the habit of condom usage to our customers instead of merely selling condoms. This makes condombazaar different from other condom marketing companies and retailers. We are focused on habituating our customers to condom usage through user-focused initiatives.
There is a general opinion that Men are self centered and selfish when it comes to condom usage, but our experience is different. 90% of the customers are men at condombazaar and we have male customers who regularly buy condoms for more than 6 years. This shows that men are not self centered while coming to condom usage. Instead, our male customers are caring partners and husband.
Men shied away from condom purchase because of embarrassment factor and when condoms are accessible through an online platform, they tend to buy condoms regularly. We are delighted that we have brought a behavioural change among men with regard to condom usage.
We are happy to see this behavioral change happening in India. According to NFHS-5 (2019-2021) survey, 9.5% Indian men are using condoms, which is way ahead of 5.6% usage as per NFHS-4 (2015-16). This behavioral change can bring about a positive change in reproductive health of young Indians and can significantly reduce the number of unintended pregnancies in the country. In 2015–2019, there were a total of 48,500,000 pregnancies annually in India. Of these, 21,500,000 pregnancies were unintended.
Each unintended pregnancy is not only a burden for India but also a huge burden for the couples. According to Wikipedia and based on the estimate by Economic Times in April 2011 and adjusted to inflation for August 2022, the cost of raising a child from birth to age of majority (21 Years) for a middle to upper-middle income family comes to about ₹1.17 crore (equivalent to 1.2 crore or US$160,000 in 2023) in total. The mathematics will be huge when we multiply this 1.2 crore by 21,500,000 unintended pregnancies.
Condombazaar’s team is happy, that we have around 1 lakh customers over the past 12 years, whom have purchased condoms from us at least for a year’s usage. Assuming that 30% of the customers have not effectively used the purchased condoms or the condoms were used outside of their marriage or they have used some other regular contraceptive, we have around 70k regular condom users. We are sure the habit of condom usage which is the purpose of our business has saved around 1.2 crore for each of the Seventy thousand customers and contributed ₹84k crores to the socio-economic benefit of our country.
Request for Condom Manufacturers and Marketing companies.
Condom is one product which has not seen any notable innovation for the 50 years in India. We appreciate the wide range of flavoured condoms from Strawberry to Paan, made available by Indian brands and there are a lot of marketing innovations by various condom brands.
But there is a huge need for real product innovations like, bringing condoms in different sizes, because every men is of different size, there is a big demand for non latex condoms as many couples have latex allergy, condom manufacturers can think of Glow in dark condoms, which can really add a fun in the Indian bedrooms.
With these kinds of innovations, it will be more and more easy for us to promote the Habit of condom usage. We are continuously working for the cause. We also request every reader to STAND UP FOR THE CAUSE of regular condom usage.
For more information, visit www.condombazaar.com/email [email protected]
