Why We Built FRQ: Free Websites for Small Shops

*By Pi Sulaiman, Founder, FRQ*

The idea for FRQ started during festival season, in Pernambut, a small village near Vellore, Tamil Nadu. I was walking through the village with a friend. The clothing shops were busy. People were browsing, comparing sarees and kurtas, getting ready for the celebrations.

Then my phone buzzed. A local shop had posted its latest stock in a WhatsApp group I had joined.

I looked at the shops around me, and then at that message. I kept asking myself one question: how do people even find out what is available nearby?

One shop, one group, one question

Every shop had its own way of showing stock. Some had a WhatsApp group. Some had an Instagram account. To see what a shop had, you first had to know the shop, find its account, or join its group.

A busy market can have many shops. A customer might only know a handful of them. The rest might have exactly what she wants, two lanes away, and she will never find out.

That gap is what FRQ is trying to close. The question I kept coming back to was this: what if every shop could be found in one place, and each shop still kept its own identity?

Why a shop website, not another group

Many small shopkeepers are already comfortable with WhatsApp. It is how they share photos and talk to customers. I did not want to ask them to learn a new app.

But a website, a catalogue and an online presence can feel like a separate job, on top of running a shop. So FRQ is built to be used from a phone, in a few minutes, by someone who has never owned a website.

Every shop gets its own web address on a free subdomain, with a product catalogue and a choice of design. A shop can share its own link on a signboard or a WhatsApp status. The same shop also appears on frq.in, where shoppers can browse what is in stock nearby.

I wanted the web address to be short and easy to say out loud. A shop's address should be something you can put on a signboard. The name FRQ comes from that same idea: helping people find retailers quickly.

After someone finds the shop

Being found is only half of it. A shop still has to manage prices, track stock and bill customers.

FRQ includes counter billing and GST-ready receipts that can be sent to the customer as a PDF on WhatsApp. It also has stock and pricing controls and stock alerts. The product is free to start, and FRQ does not take a commission on product sales. (Our current plan details are on https://frq.in.)

Where we are honestly

FRQ is early. The core platform is built, and shops are still joining one by one. Each shop still has to bring its own stock online, and shoppers only benefit when there are enough shops in one area to make searching worthwhile. We are working on that now.

I would rather say that plainly than pretend the marketplace is already full. Shopkeepers and shoppers will shape what comes next, and I am listening to both.

What comes next

We are at the point where listening to shopkeepers and shoppers will shape what comes next.

If you run a small shop and want a free website, you can start at https://shop.frq.in. If you have a story about how your customers find you, I would like to hear it.

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