Kichink aims to bring small businesses and entrepreneurs the same ease and consumer benefits of an e-commerce platform that the major players have. San Diego Founder Institute Graduate Claudia de Heredia saw that the market in Mexico for e-commerce was virtually non-existent. In 2012, the total amount e-commerce in Mexico was valued at 4.5 million dollars. On top of this, she saw that there was little to no opportunity for innovators to sell their products online, secure payment, and make a delivery of their items. The idea behind Kichink was to make artisans' and traders' products available to the people of Mexico at the click of a mouse.
However, there are challenges to executing this idea. Foremost, the inability of the Mexican people to use online payment methods. Currently in Mexico, a little bit less than half of the country's population has consistent access to the Internet if they have access at all. Around 75 percent of the people who have Internet access in Mexico have made online purchases in their lifetimes, and of that 75 percent 44 percent still prefer to pay for their items with cash post-purchase. All of these factors make banking institutions wary of expanding credit card use in a country that has put 60 percent of its economic activity into the informal economy.
Despite the large obstacles standing in the way, De Heredia, her husband Cludio del Conde, and six employees founded Kichink back in 2012 when the total market for e-commerce in the entire country was only 4.5 million. Since then, Kichink has expanded rapidly and now works with over 59,000 separate small businesses, entrepreneurs, artisans, and innovators. The total market value for e-commerce in the country has gone from 4.5 million in 2012 to over 12.2 million dollars in 2015 just a few years later, and the market for e-commerce is only expected to expand more as big players such as Amazon and Walmart get interested in expansion into the relatively new e-commerce territory in the country.
While the entrance of the big companies like Amazon and Walmart might daunt some, De Heredia was excited by the result:
It's an incredible market validation obviously [to] have players of the caliber of Walmart and Amazon [create] a greater opportunity for growth and validate that the ecosystem is ready to grow."
The rise of the company is incredible. Back in 2012 when the company was getting its footing De Heredia would literally go door-to-door and meet with small business owners and innovators with ideas that they wanted to sell to the public. She was able to secure 500 businesses and artisans at the start of Kichink by sitting down and having a coffee and talking to each person individually and finding out about their businesses or ideas. In a little less than four years there are now 59,000 total separate interests using Kichink to help sell, collect payment, and ship their goods in Mexico. There are over 1.7 million visitors a month to Kichink's website. The attractive thing about Kichink is their dedication to the little guy. They want to support the unsupported and bring economic connectivity to people who have never experienced it in such a way before. Over 25 percent of the deliveries that Kichink facilitates and makes are to towns with total populations that are less than 30,000 according to the Mexican Internet Association. Services like this are invaluable in a place where the postal service is inefficient or even non-existent.
Currently, e-commerce is still an area with a lot of potential growth in Mexico. Clearly, there are some major companies like Amazon and Walmart who are interested in the nearly untapped market. Kichink has not only innovated for the daily lives of artisans, traders, and producers in Mexico, but for all of the Mexican people.
