Digitally Decentralized Rural Economy

Women entrepreneurs of rural communities in Pakistan have capacity to produce products related to indigenous crafts by employing home-based women artisans but lack access to wider markets due to distance from their villages and social mobility constraints. Mostly sell products conventionally to markets near their residences and sales agents etc. Limited access to markets means that these women are unable to sustain their businesses because of low demand leading to low revenue, resulting drop in income for already low-income households. Kaarvan solved this problem by developing an innovative technological solution which connects skilled women entrepreneurs with wider urban markets through a decentralized digital solution. This follows (i) development of a customized Multi-Vendor Portal, AanganPk (ii) Access to smartphones, (iii) Digital Enablement Trainings. After obtaining Digital Enablement Trainings, women entrepreneurs and artisans could upload their products on an online, multi-vendor portal and receive orders from anywhere.

According to Mobile Gender Gap Report 2019 published by GSMA Connected Women, 52% women around the world are not using internet. Further, there is widest mobile gender gap in South Asian countries where women are 28% less likely than men to own a mobile and 58% less likely to use mobile internet. Also, Pakistan stands on the 150th position of women economic participation & opportunity as per the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 by World Economic Forum. One of the development challenges is limited access to markets for Pakistani women entrepreneurs in rural areas resulting into lower economic participation. While rural women entrepreneurs in Pakistan have capacity to produce and supply products related to indigenous crafts by employing home-based women artisans, they lack however, access to wider markets due to distance from their villages to the markets, selling these products conventionally to markets near their residences. Kaarvan solved this problem by developing an innovative technological solution which connects skilled women entrepreneurs & artisans with wider urban markets through a decentralized digital model in market linkages. This solution emphasizes upon minimizing the digital gender divide and women economic participation.

Our innovative technological solution connects skilled women entrepreneurs & artisans with wider urban markets through a decentralized digital model in market linkages. Rural women entrepreneurs and artisans access a customized multi-vendor E-commerce portal, AanganPK.com through smart phones. AanganPK E-commerce cycle comprises of following activities;

1)    Customer places an order on Aanganpk.com and an automated email is sent to Kaarvan, customer and artisan. A representative from Kaarvan calls back customer for order confirmation.

2)    Artisan reaches out to the nearest Pakistan Post office and dispatches the package using their Cash-On-Delivery services.

3)    Pakistan Post’s Service agent delivers the order to customer within 2-5 business days.

4)    Customer pays price of product and services charges to the same service agent to send the money to artisan using Pakistan Posts “Money-Order” Service.

5)    Artisan receives the price of her product in cash from the customer in 3-7 days through Pakistan Post money order service. Today, we’re building capacity for Digital Readiness: necessary “Survival Kit” for remote trainings to take place – for women to invest in internet data and leverage e-meeting platforms.

The users of our solution are women entrepreneurs operating in apparel industry from rural areas in Pakistan. These rural artisans have limited access to markets which often drives them out of business. Our solution gives them digital readiness/literacy to access mobile phones, internet and Multi-Vendor Digital Portal (AanganPK.com). Women entrepreneurs then have access to wider markets on which they can market and sell their products online. Furthermore, it increases their revenue and consequently more income for their own households. Kaarvan’s Theory of Change believes that when a woman’s income increases, her household decision-making capacity improves as well. Moreover, these women entrepreneurs do not operate in seclusion. They have a network of home-based women population (artisans) who are working for them as wage-labor and employing their skills to the value chain. The incomes of these artisans is dependent upon orders received by women entrepreneur, which will increase as their business increases. Based on our prior experience of working with rural community and understanding of social constraints for women, our model proposes a grass-root level community-based approach to connect home-based skilled women entrepreneurs to urban markets, at national and international level.

Our solution provides marginalized women population access to digital tools and technology that enables them to create self-employment opportunities for themselves in the form of business entrepreneurship. Women entrepreneurs in rural communities of Pakistan face social constraints and mobility challenges which hinders their economic participation. This digital enablement of doing business with wider access to markets through E-commerce platform reduces cost of doing business for marginalized women. In this way, more women from rural communities can participate in overall economic activity and generate good employment opportunities for other women artisans in neighborhood through setting up small business hubs.

Kaarvan’s digital solution for marginalized women in rural communities of Pakistan is innovative from other E-commerce models because it offers decentralized model of doing business and is cost-effective and sustainable market linkage intervention. In a decentralized model, micro entrepreneurs in rural communities are directly linked with end consumer without any intermediary. Decentralized model has saved women micro entrepreneurs from profit margin exploitation of middlemen. With this, the cost of doing business for rural women has been reduced significantly because it does not require mobility towards markets but carry out business activity through their smartphones. Further, end consumers have opportunity to directly link with source (micro entrepreneur). Following similar interventions being implemented in developing world is an evidence on women empowerment programs that this project will contribute to;

SEWA-Self Employed Women’s Association, has set up SEWA Trade Facilitation Centers (STFC). These centers coordinate design, production, and marketing of products made by artisans to be sold on national and global platform. Sales are made through outlets, B2B marketing, exhibitions in major cities of India, and via STFC portal. Similarly, Marketplace: Handwork of India also uses an online portal to make sales to a market that is based entirely in the US. Its product is manufactured by around 500 artisans who are organized into 14 member cooperatives. But Kaarvan’s model has directly empowered women entrepreneurs from rural communities, through a decentralized solution of doing business whereas other such solutions being centralized and implemented in urban areas.

Kaarvan’s solution of “Digitally Decentralized Rural Economy” comprises of a multi-vendor portal (AanganPk) built in WordPress CMS (Content Management System) powered by PHP programming language and MySQL database. This is an existing technology and a very popular one, a large percentage of online applications are built on this technology i.e. WordPress. This technology/portal digitally connects rural artisans to urban consumer markets for selling their crafts based products online. The micro entrepreneurs and artisans may use mobile device to access the portal AanganPK using 3G/4G technologies or Wi-Fi network.

AanganPK’s portal can be accessed through smartphone or from a computer at www.aanganpk.com.

The evidence of our technology is the live and function Aangan portal at http://aanganpk.com/. The video link to our solution demo is; (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffKJRlgaQg) Furthermore, the most popular example of technology that Kaarvan is using for this initiative is Amazon’s multi-vendor portal (https://www.amazon.com/). But the difference among both is that Aangan (http://aanganpk.com/) only caters to rural artisans as vendor on this platform through a decentralized model by directly connecting sellers with buyers. Whereas Amazon has a centralized portal that links buyers and sellers through virtual assistants and caters urban communities

Kaarvan’s and specifically this solution’s Theory of Change: Educate in Life Skills (Digital Included), Enable to Earn and Empower to Decide.

The solution’s Theory of Change encapsulates educating women in life skills specifically digital skills necessary so that they are able to operate digital devices to access internet, and thereby access social media platforms or multi-vendor portals such as AanganPk or DarazPk to sell their products online anywhere in the world. This digital literacy and enablement then enables to earn her livelihood. The enablement increases her income, as well as that of women artisans employed in her value chain as they receive more work. In our experience, a rural micro-entrepreneur on an average employs 20 home-based artisans. These micro entrepreneurs will disseminate their digital knowledge onto the artisans in their value chain as well. The increased earning of women artisans and entrepreneurs therein lead to an improved contribution of women in household decisions, specifically related to their children’s health and education and hence, empowers women to decide. In 2018, Kaarvan provided 80 women entrepreneurs from distant villages in seven districts of Pakistan with access to digital markets (AanganPK). An impact evaluation study, 6 months after the trainings and functioning of operational process, revealed that each women entrepreneur has earned an additional average amount of PKR 2,382 through AanganPk. At least 62% of women entrepreneurs are now earning an additional income through the Multi-Vendor Portal. The portal had then sold around 78 products worth PKR 187,050 and was increasing in its business. The average monthly income of women entrepreneur and artisans had increased by PKR 794, in that the baseline income changed from PKR 6,820 to PKR 7,614. It reported significantly distributed number of orders from across the country, thus achieving its objective of a truly wider outreach. Before the trainings, 43% of the micro-entrepreneurs had used the internet. After the trainings, 82% of micro-entrepreneurs’ report using internet regularly. Likewise, only 5.5% of the micro-entrepreneurs had used email before the trainings. This increased to 47% of the micro-entrepreneurs using emails regularly after trainings.

Currently, Kaarvan has digitally enabled 86 women Micro entrepreneurs on digital platform from distant villages of 7 districts of Pakistan. Keeping in view the current economic crisis and loss of jobs due to COVID-19, our estimate for the next year of this intervention is to digitally enable another 150 women micro entrepreneurs from 10 more districts in Pakistan. In our experience, a rural micro-entrepreneur on an average employs 20 home-based artisans for work. For the next 5 years, Kaarvan plans to disseminate this digitally decentralized model in 50 districts across Pakistan and reach out 750 Micro entrepreneurs with 15,000 (750*20) rural women artisans in the value chain that will be directly attached to Micro entrepreneurs in the form of a village business unit.

Women in Pakistan, especially those residing in rural communities, face digital gender divide because of abject poverty or limited income resources. This problem can only be solved by including these underprivileged women into the digital world and giving them access and literacy to digital tools. Incorporating learning from the pilot run in 2018 to expand number of artisans involved in AanganPk (Digital platform), exposure to other e-commerce portal, digital wallets, awareness, registration & engagement with Social Media Networks – Facebook & Instagram. This means that right now when the world is in a state of isolation due to pandemic, digital solutions for income generation is the need of hour for women artisans to prevent them fall below poverty line. Keeping this in view, Kaarvan has set its goal for the upcoming 5 years to reach up to 750 Micro entrepreneurs with whom almost 15,000 women artisans will be directly attached for subletting work. While looking from a broader perspective, average household size in rural areas of Pakistan comprises of 7 persons which shows that self-employing 15,750 (750+15000) women will create impact in lives of more than 100,000 (15,750*7) residents in rural communities through increased income generation.

This scalability of our intervention will be rigorously monitored bi-annually through Kaarvan’s Monitoring, Evaluation and Research (MER) team to measure its impact in the community. We also seek to replicate our digital model in other developing countries and partner with international donor organizations for funding.

As our solution includes digital platform and tools for women in rural communities to run online business. For the upcoming years, challenges that requires immediate action is improvements in products and improved user experience (product quality, timely delivery and packaging). With this, improved access to digital tools (smartphones, Network service providers etc) and further customization will be required in digital enablement curriculum and inclusion of video tutorials & remote training mechanism are few of the tenets of scale-up. Whereas in the next five years, a greater marketing approach is to be designed to present opportunities for these women to sell their products and outreach to customers. The project is to be expanded to not only the national market, but international market as well opening gateways for being able to sell craft-based products from rural economy to the high-end fashion markets. Effective and wider communication campaigns will be required to enhance push marketing. Another challenge that can be foreseen in the longer term is the retention, training and development of human resource for the implementation of this project in the next five years and hereafter.

For addressing immediate challenges in the next year, Kaarvan’s training team is working tirelessly to train women artisans for product improvements by connecting them with different fashion brands and usage of internet for design search. Also, user experience is being enhanced by creating branded boxes of AanganPK for a good packaging and materializing agreements with logistical partners. As for the curriculum, customized digital literacy curriculum has been designed by Kaarvan’s IT and Communications experts for improving digital literacy. In the coming five years, successful initiation of the innovative solution as well as a strong economic impact has provided an interest from corporate and development organizations alike to partner with Kaarvan on scaling up. Kaarvan has already initiated to expand the domain of the project to include multiple partners inclusive of Daraz.pk and Punjab Skills Development Fund (PSDF). Daraz.pk will be partnering with Kaarvan to provide their portal as an avenue for rural women artisans to further sell their products to wider markets, whereas PSDF is incorporating Digital Enablement Trainings as a trade curriculum to be taught to their trainees. This strategy will be used to enhance the widespread communication campaigns resulting the model’s integration into local and international markets.

Nil

15 Full time Staff members.

Kaarvan has the organizational capacity to implement “Digitally Decentralized Rural Economy” in Punjab. It comprises of a skillful and dynamic team of the following experts under the leadership of its CEO for implementation of this solution in rural community;

·         The Field Coordinators have a breadth of experience in interaction and working with women home-based workers across Pakistan, their families, communities, middle persons and various other stakeholders for mobilization.

·         The Master Trainers ensure training and development of women micro entrepreneurs and artisans on crafts-based product enhancement, digital trainings and business entrepreneurship.

·         The IT & Communications expert work closely together for ensuring development and dissemination of Digital literacy to rural women along with managing coordination with Samsung’ team.

·         The Monitoring, Evaluation & Research (MER) team is experienced to asses an evaluate impacts of the solution at hand, guaranteeing that the activities produce relevant outputs and therein outcomes and that the feedback loop is accommodated in program execution. 

.         The Media and PR resources look after the widespread coverage of decentralized model on social media platforms for outreach.

Kaarvan has developed a holistic practice of immersive grassroots operational fieldwork of identifying, mobilizing, providing skills training, digitally connecting women to urban markets and creating culture of informal economy of women home-based workers in villages through community development centers. Kaarvan is currently working with following partners for implementation of its Digitally Decentralized Rural Economy solution;

• Strategic partnership with Samsung Pakistan for digital literacy training and taking the latest technology to the grassroots level.
• TCS partnered with Kaarvan as logistical partner that seeks to enable rural women entrepreneurs and artisans with deliveries of packages.
• The British Asian Trust (BAT) & DFID-UK funds the project ‘Women Economic Empowerment’ in which the approach goes beyond skills development to create more sustainable livelihoods for women also through digital market linkages, ecosystem development, and behavioral change.
• Punjab Skills Development Fund (PSDF) is funding community programs of “Skills for Market Linkages” for providing vocational skills training to underprivileged women and incorporation of Digital Enablement Trainings as a trade curriculum for digital market linkages. 
•  UN Women Pakistan has partnered with Kaarvan for providing digital literacy to its beneficiaries under this solution during COVID-19 pandemic so that marginalized women can earn income through digital platforms.

Kaarvan has developed a two-prong strategy for sustainability of this solution;

(i) The digital solution will be sustained through grants and funding from donor organizations. Kaarvan is working with local and international donor organizations such as Punjab Skills Development Fund (PSDF) and The British Asian Trust along with DFID-UK and implementing this solution in rural communities. Kaarvan has also been nominated for the World Summit on the Information Society Prizes 2020 (WSIS) in Digital business category for its uniqueness in providing digital solution to marginalized communities. Also, Kaarvan’s model has reached to top 5 contestants for British Council’s #IdeasChangeLives Challenge from among 500 solutions across the world. This is how we are scaling up the program and pitching at various platforms for sustaining and replicating the model. 

 (ii) In long run, project is designed such that onus of digital linkages is on women entrepreneur through subscription model. The women entrepreneur (Seller) shall directly engage with the end customer (Buyers) who orders from Kaarvan’s multi-vendor portal and become key players in the model. Seller will be responsible for order delivery, customer service and products’ quality etc. This shall capacitate women micro entrepreneurs to own her digital business and build confidence. A percentage of each transaction will be deducted by Kaarvan for sustainability of model as the business cycle of these women entrepreneur will keep growing. Kaarvan shall assist women through the process, to motivate to engage with portal, respond to queries and ensure smooth operations for a specific time period.

With the support of MIT Solve Challenge, Kaarvan aims to reach-out to 15,000 female artisans & 750 micro-entrepreneurs in rural areas in 50 districts of Pakistan. The vision is to connect them all to larger national and international markets for value chain development and income-generation through a systematic intervention around Digital Enablement Trainings which will allow them to market and sell their products online on http://aanganpk.com/, thereby creating a decentralized & sustainable model of business for the artisans. Kaarvan requires Solve’s support to scale up its model on international platform in the upcoming year for global outreach.

Kaarvan plans to sustain and replicate this model in collaboration with other donor organizations to fulfill its long-term goals. The idea is to create potential partnerships to expand the solution’s revenue model that will help in scalability and find marketing opportunities. This will lead to maximum outreach and provide exposure to our solution. We look forward to market the solution to present more B2B opportunities for these women to sell their products and outreach to customers. The project is to be expanded to not only the national market, but international market as well opening gateways for being able to sell craft-based products from the rural economy to the high-end fashion markets. 

Kaarvan seeks to partner with following types of organizations in the upcoming years;

1.    Information Technology Company and Mobile Payment Partners for provision of smartphones, gadgets and other technological solutions.

2.    Network Service Providers and Internet Connectivity Partners for access to internet or advance mobile data technologies.

3.    Logistical Partners to provide a good user experience with easy and attractive packaging and delivery services.

4.    Digital Selling Platform Partners & International Gateway Partners for National and International markets for establishing sustainable linkages with women entrepreneurs. 

5.    National and International donor organizations for provision of funds and grants to ensure scalability and sustainability of this solution along with grass root level community organizations for widespread implementation.

Kaarvan’s Digital Decentralized solution uses innovative technology to improve the quality of life for women and girls that reside in rural and peri-urban communities. Due to social mobility constraints and remoteness of areas women micro-entrepreneurs that have life-earning skills lack access to wider markets for doing business. These women and girls are underprivileged and hence also lack access to digital tools, technology and literacy to run online business. Our solution provides them with opportunities to grow their business through digital platforms and reduces their cost of doing business. This intervention will lead to self-employment opportunities for all potential women and girls in marginalized communities. Women micro entrepreneurs become empowered in their communities when they earn a dignified livelihood and hence elevates their position in the society. These women entrepreneurs turn out to be change agents in their communities and help empower more women through their voices.

Through Innovation for Women Prize, Kaarvan plans to create increased easy access for digital tools and technologies to marginalized skillful women and girls so that digital gender divide can be reduced and more women can participate in self-employed income-generation opportunities. 

Kaarvan’s digital solution provides digital literacy and business entrepreneurship learning opportunities to the most vulnerable women and girls in rural communities of Pakistan. This learning opportunity provides these women to improve business sense and sell their products on market competitive rates eliminating middlemen profit margin exploitation. The solution provides marginalized women to use their crafts-based skills and become self-employed by running home-based micro enterprises. With this Prize and opportunity to connect with GM Motors, Kaarvan will advance the digital learning mechanism of the solution along with its scaling.