Saba Rajkotia
20th March 2020
Indian women struggle to start and expand their own businesses due to limited access to capital, lack of time, and restricted mobility. However, with the growth and development of the internet, women have been given the chance to be financially independent for the first time. A number of online platforms have come up that enable women to be online sellers and entrepreneurs from the comfort of their homes.
One such platform is Bengaluru-based Meesho, that was founded in 2015 by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal. It enables any customer to start a business with zero investment, and covers the logistics, delivery and payment related to any sales you might make. Meesho now boasts over 1 Crore sellers who are business owners, students and homemakers – the majority of which are women. “We are bringing offline boutiques, typically run by housewives, online and encouraging more women to become entrepreneurs”, says Vidit Aatrey in conversation with Bloomberg Quint, “individuals are the face of the commerce on Meesho”.
What sets Meesho apart from resale giants like Flipkart and Amazon is its target audience. While Flipkart and Amazon corner the market on branded fashion and expensive phones, Meesho appeals to a wider audience, with three-quarters of its business coming from outside the top six cities in India. Flipkart and Amazon go after an audience that is comfortable consuming content in English, “Meesho is going for those, for whom the gateway to information is WhatsApp” says Mukul Arora, one of the first investors in Meesho.
Furthermore, Meesho functions first and foremost at the community level. Business owners expand and sell through personal contacts, and this increases the level of trust between buyers and sellers. “These are created by people in their social network and if something goes wrong, they know who to reach out to”, says Ankur Pahwa of EY India.
Larger companies like Amazon have also been making an effort to promote female entrepreneurship. ‘Saheli Program’ is an Amazon initiative that dedicates a Saheli store just for products fabricated locally by Indian women. These women make and sell a wide range of products including bread bins, sarees, incense sticks and notebooks. Amazon Saheli is partnered with seven NGOs around India that reach 80,000 women artisans across the country, from where these products are sourced.
In addition to offering women the opportunity to sell their products, Amazon Saheli provides a number of other benefits. If you are a member of Saheli Amazon, you are given a separate storefront through which to sell your items. This ensures that Amazon’s vast market is open to these women entrepreneurs. In addition to offering access to logistics and fulfilment facilities, the store also provides free on-line and off-line training to its members on how to execute online selling processes and make a product portfolio online.
There are various examples of how Saheli has been successful in its endeavours to uplift women. Paliben used to be a rag-picker in Ahmedabad, and would recycle the materials she found into quilts and stationery products – hardly able to make ends meet. In 2016 she was discovered by the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a partner of Amazon Saheli. SEWA gave her the training and opportunity to put her creative talents to good use and she is now leading Gitanjali Stationery, a recycled stationery brand. Once Gitanjali Stationery joined Amazon Saheli, it expanded even further. Where at first Gitanjali’s market was restricted to Ahmedabad, it now has orders coming in from all across the country.
“Currently, I am a master trainer at Gitanjali Cooperative. I develop new designs for stationary products and train hundreds of waste recyclers like me”, speaking of her children she says “I’m so happy that I can now educate them, and I can see that their future is brighter than mine”.
