JITA Last-Mile Rural Distribution

I am currently serving as the CEO of JITA, a social enterprise that is one of the pioneers of sustainable rural last-mile distribution in Bangladesh. Joining at a pivotal time, I helped shape JITA’s future trajectory and currently oversee operation and resource management. Born in Bangladesh, a considerable portion of my life was spent abroad in pursuit of higher education and a career.

Following my post-graduate academics in the United States, I spent over 20 years of my life transforming into a seasoned business professional capable of driving operational excellence and revenue growth. Through my work across various multinational organizations, I built a reputation on approaching challenges by balancing creative sensibility and result-oriented practicality.

As a leader, I strongly believe in fostering a culture of collaboration within teams that is powered by a focused strategic framework. I never shy away from rolling up my sleeves when the situation demands.

Poor infrastructure raises the cost of quality essential goods for rural consumers in Bangladesh, comprising of almost 60% of the country’s 160M population. Meanwhile local substitutes, plagued by adulteration and sub-standard quality, flood the market and cause decline in consumer health and wellbeing. Additionally rural markets offer fewer decent work opportunities for people with limited or no education, especially women.

JITA’s last-mile distribution platform addresses the inequalities in market access faced by rural communities. We do so by connecting private industries with rural markets through an innovative supply chain network that brings quality essentials at affordable prices to rural communities. Simultaneously, JITA’s platform empowers and builds capacity of aspiring entrepreneurs and disenfranchised individuals from those communities to secure sustainable income.

We envision JITA’s work to elevate the socioeconomic condition of rural communities by building a resilient market system that creates value through improved access and inclusive livelihood opportunities. 

As rural-urban divide in Bangladesh gets blurred, consumption habits between the two communities gradually become homogeneous. However gaps in traditional value chains and poor market integration penalizes rural consumers for consuming better quality essential goods. This means a bottle of cooking oil or a pack of sanitary napkins from a renowned brand can cost up to 20 percent more for rural consumers. Considering that 8 in 10 poor live in rural areas (World Bank, 2019), this penalty only adds to their financial burden.

Additionally fewer decent work opportunities have spurred increased migration to large cities. With limited education and employable skills, those who remain rely on agriculture for a livelihood. However in the last decade, many have transitioned to the retail sector to explore entrepreneurial opportunities. There are approximately 1.3M ‘micro-merchants’ operating in Bangladesh with nearly 50,000 new entrants each year (UNCDF, 2019). Despite a market size of USD 18.42 billion, these entrepreneurs suffer from lack of financing, skills training and other formal support services. Rural women continue to face limitations in livelihood opportunities and ownership of resources due to gender discriminations. With fewer opportunities to accumulate wealth, these women end up being more vulnerable to the effects of poverty.

JITA operates a last-mile rural distribution network that supplies quality essential consumer goods and, in the process, creates supplemental income through entrepreneurship. JITA activates micro-entrepreneurs to run stockist points (JITA Hubs), from where goods reach the hands of rural consumers through a wide network of micro-merchants and women door-to-door sales agents called Aparajitas (Bengali for “women who do not accept defeat”). Using a dedicated field team, JITA facilitates engagement between market actors and ensures that Hubs, micro-merchants and Aparajitas have access to a reliable supply chain.  

To source products for its channel, JITA aligns with a national and international pool of reputed manufacturing partners. JITA creates value to these partners by offering a cost-effective means of supplying to markets that otherwise requires high logistics costs to serve. Through JITA, men and women can access training and market linkage facilities to generate sustainable income as entrepreneurs. On the other hand, rural consumers gain access to better quality goods at fair prices and not have to rely on consuming adulterated substitutes. 

By taking the burden away from manufacturers and ensuring underserved consumers get quality goods at the right price, JITA is promoting a more equitable and resilient market ecosystem across rural Bangladesh.

JITA operates in rural areas in over 47 districts of Bangladesh where a significant portion of residents fall under the poor and extreme poor status. Those with some assets tend to make a living through activities such as smallholder farming. Otherwise individuals with a weaker financial base have to engage in degrading work as daily wage laborers. Even with the capacity to invest, majority of rural residents have difficulty finding a platform to launch an entrepreneurial venture.  Women from these households remain the most socioeconomically vulnerable, especially those who must fend for themselves. 

 Through the project, we are consistently trying to figure out their varying needs and surroundings to be able to offer a solution that adds tangible value. We sought to engage individuals with entrepreneurial aspirations and some savings to establish Hubs as a means of generating sustainable income. In doing so, JITA has effectively created a platform through its distribution model that empowers budding rural entrepreneurs. These individuals have achieved meaningful improvement in their lives by earning respect from the community. On the other hand, The Aparajita role was designed to leverage the women’s strength as community level ambassadors with easy access to neighbor’s doorstep.

When I took lead of JITA in 2017, it was in a state of flux after spending years to shape a clear path to financial sustainability. With the responsibility of paving a new direction, I started evaluating JITA’s inherent strengths and how those could be leveraged to enhance impact. After rigorous brainstorming, I was able to identify an additional layer of impact that JITA’s last-mile distribution platform could offer to address rural poverty and unemployment.    

The idea was to re-align JITA’s operational priorities and emphasize developing and mobilizing rural entrepreneurs. This was achieved by bringing in additional partners, enhancing the product basket, and scaling the distribution platform to create opportunities for a larger segment of potential rural entrepreneurs. 

My team of managers were quickly convinced of the initiative and made the necessary changes to put the plans into action. By 2018 JITA had grown its Hub network by 67 percent to 296 entrepreneurs covering 27 districts, having increased our capacity to serve close to 3.5M rural households. The lessons learned from the past were leveraged to pave the way for a nationwide scale up.

Growing up in a country like Bangladesh, it was very difficult to remain ignorant of the widespread social disparities. As the country recovered from a devastating war for independence, families like mine had either escaped to a Western nation or stayed behind to build something. However, my parents chose the latter and managed to build a strong foundation for me and my sister.

Inspired by their hustle, I focused on paving an ambitious career path with the intent of achieving the highest possible success regardless of the sector or industry. But after 20 years of relentless pursuit to achieve, I felt disconnected from the work and felt an urge to explore an avenue that would rekindle my drive to create significant value. 

Through a close friend, I came to learn about the concept of a social enterprise and an organization called JITA in Bangladesh. The problems being tackled by JITA resonated with me on an ideological level since I was raised to value equality in all its forms. Seeing as how I could leverage my hard-earned experiences to contribute to this project made me gravitate towards JITA with newfound vigor.

With over 20 years of multinational experience in the private sector, I bring a multidisciplinary approach to leading the work being done at JITA. Boasting a history of redirecting low-impact projects towards a path to success, I have acquired the confidence, intuition and foresight necessary to drive meaningful impact while keeping an eye on sustainability. My earlier leadership experience can be traced back starting from when I was leading the Bangladesh operations for the Japanese consumer electronics company Kenwood.

Other subsequent roles have included being part of the management team responsible for establishing the first private export processing zone in Bangladesh. Subsequently I have headed the after-sales service unit for Nokia in five emerging markets and as the CEO of Purnava, the non-medicated healthcare subsidiary of a renowned Bangladeshi pharmaceutical.

In addition to serving on various leadership teams, I have invested a considerable amount of time in pursuing entrepreneurial ventures. Such initiatives have allowed me to strengthen my out-of-the-box thinking as I learned to be adaptive and agile when faced with new challenges. One highlight was my tenure as an early-adopter of the AirBNB platform, where I achieved super-host status in just 8 months by optimizing customer experiences and tracking business performance. 

With such a distinct combination of experiences under my belt, I felt prepared to take on the role at JITA and was inspired to support rural entrepreneurship as a result of my own experiences.

During my first year as the CEO of JITA, the organization experienced constant backlash from rural communities for trying to get women out of their homes to work. This backlash stemmed from conservative social norms and I was highly bothered by this since many of the Aparajitas were enthusiastic to work.

My team and I rigorously explored options until we agreed on one: rolling out a community awareness campaign that would involve the male household members. We divided into two teams targeting a specific problematic region: Rangpur and Sylhet. I chose Sylhet, an area renowned for its religious history, strong economic conditions and highly conservative lifestyle. 

The initiative was a success in Rangpur as engaging the men in dialogue drove acceptance. But the same was not true for Sylhet, where the men did not engage as openly. However we managed to bypass the issue in the region by including those who operated retail stores under the classification of Aparajita. Since these women remain indoors, they were not subjected to criticism. Therefore we decided to support these women in the same manner as our door-to-door sales agents in order to keep the spirit of Aparajitas alive in places like Sylhet.

My tenure at Nokia was as part of the leadership team looking after Emerging Asia market, which consisted of five countries (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives). Nokia was having trouble with its spare parts distribution, which was plagued by lengthy shipping times and stretched the repair turnaround to three to four weeks. This had detrimental effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty, especially for a brand that was aggressively pursuing global market dominance.

As the Head of Care, I identified the need for a localized solution to serve the five markets. It was a challenging process that required overcoming a lot of red tape and shaping mindset of high-level stakeholders. Within a year, my team and I established the first of its kind re-distribution center in Bangladesh through a partnership with DHL. This center would stock and supply the necessary hardware and technical know-how for popular products through a network of in-country hubs.

The initiative yielded immediate measurable results:

• Improved demand forecasting accuracy that reduced inventory costs by 30% and increased on-time parts deliveries by 50%, 
• Minimized swap (replacement of phones beyond repair) expense by 40% within two quarters by augmenting repair processes.

The concept of ‘last-mile distribution’ is not unique as its origins can be traced back decades ago with connections to humanitarian relief programs. However JITA infuses innovation by leveraging resources embedded in the community to build a cohesive supply chain system. Our model incurs low start-up costs and can be rolled out at a quicker rate (within weeks) compared to more capital intensive operations. Due to its adaptive approach, JITA is the only in Bangladesh and among the few in the world that is on a steady pathway to sustainability.

Another key aspect where JITA has innovated is in developing a multi-product basket for its channels. Generally commercial entities and non-profits that operate distribution models tend to focus only on a single product or service. This has proven to be financially unsustainable and JITA instead stresses on incorporating a wide range of products that align with the three key verticals (health, hygiene and nutrition). This multi-product mix allows the rural entrepreneurs to achieve economies of scale by selling a versatile combination and ensuring promising margins.

To strike a strong balance between social impact and financial sustainability, JITA needed to think out of the box and diversify its revenue stream. Since revenue from distribution is slim, our hybrid approach secured additional income from consulting services that played to JITA’s market experience. Rather than relying heavily on donor funding to keep operations afloat, JITA has organized its internal mechanism in a way that ensures self-sustainability in the near future.

As of 2020, JITA is busy tackling COVID-19 related setbacks by implementing measures to support our rural entrepreneurs as they prepare to resume their business after months of nationwide lockdown. With an aggressive recovery strategy running through to next year, we are committed to our plan of achieving break-even by 2022.

In five years, JITA aims to address market access inequality for nearly 7.6M households, accounting for nearly 40% of total rural population. Simultaneously, JITA’s platform will empower more than 1500 aspiring entrepreneurs and disenfranchised community members through entrepreneurial opportunities. We plan to achieve these objectives by a) establishing sustainable supply chains to improve access to quality goods and boost productivity, b) building a network of rural entrepreneurs to strengthen rural markets and c) supporting people who are preparing to make the leap out of poverty. Such an interconnected impact on accessibility and decent work cannot be achieved sustainably through aid based approaches because of the lack in scalability. 

In terms of operational goals in the next five years, we are aiming to ensure 10 percent growth in yearly income for our rural entrepreneurs. We also intend to increase JITA’s reach from 5.9M to 7.6M rural households by 2025. This will be achieved by increasing the number of Hubs developed to 650. Based on these projections, we are expecting to grow JITA’s network of rural retailers to approximately 50,000 stores in five years’ time.

Currently JITA partners with local and globally reputed industrial manufacturers of fast moving consumer goods. These organizations provide their high quality essential products (e.g. sanitary napkins, hand sanitizers, flour and iodized salt) for JITA to distribute to the rural last-mile communities. JITA forms an agreement with these companies, where we take responsibility for distributing a certain amount of products through our rural channels in exchange for a commission.

JITA also has collaborated with corporates and non-profits alike to implement time-bound projects in the past. These partnerships have allowed us to explore new avenues where JITA’s strengths can support others who are aligned by similar goals. One such partnership was with Shiseido Company Ltd., a Japanese company, where JITA helped identify potential opportunities, capture insights from the ground, and conduct market testing activities over a period of five years.

JITA’s revenue mainly comes from partner commissions. However since we are geared towards expanding our operations in the next five years, JITA is open to equity investments and philanthropic grants required to bring transformation and progress to the organization. Our core revenue comes from the service fee paid by its corporate partners, ranging between 4% and 5% of the total volume of goods distributed through JITA's channels every month. An additional revenue stream is derived from offering advisory and consulting services to clients in market research, campaigns, and product testing among others. Due to the COVID-19 related disruptions in 2020 we are providing our revenue figures for 2019, which stands at USD 456,772.

We are highly interested in partnering with organizations who can help us create additional value for the potential JITA’s 650 Hub, 1006 Aparajitas and close to 50,000 rural retailers. Through partnership with technology specialists, we intend to deploy digital inventory management for JITA Hubs. Simultaneously, we would like to introduce a smart device-based tool for JITA’s field team to capture, access and process data efficiently. By digitizing the activities of Hubs and field staff, JITA can improve its operational transparency and reduce costs by around 5% to 7%.

Another scope for partnership will be to equip all JITA’s rural entrepreneurs (from Hubs to rural retailers) with a financial data capturing solution. Such a software-based solution will not only improve bookkeeping practices but also help JITA’s entrepreneurs to generate and maintain a history of financial records. These digitized records can be utilized as a credit assessment tool for small and medium enterprise (SME) loans, which our rural entrepreneurs have difficulty accessing currently.

From a strategic perspective, JITA is also interested in partnerships with organizations who are capable of expanding our footprint. Since JITA is arguably one of the top in the world making the last-mile distribution model work, a partner can leverage our work as a use case to solve a global problem that affects, by many estimates, over a billion people. Further down the road we hope to share our expertise with the partner organization to replicate and test JITA’s model in rural markets across other emerging countries.