KARACHI: Daraz has announced the launch of “Ibtida” on International Women’s Day with the mission to empower local female entrepreneurs on its platform. Ibtida is a programme that will enable women to establish online shopping stores on Daraz and take advantage of the platform’s hundreds of thousands daily active users, generate higher sales and grow their businesses.

This initiative is a promising source of sustainable income for small and large business owners to get access to ecommerce technology during these challenging economic times and will empower females to run their own stores while sitting at home.

Through this programme, Daraz offers 0 percent commission, free packaging and storage to female sellers for the 90-day incubation period. The sellers will also have access to Daraz University which is a customised learning centre to help sellers belonging to different cohorts improve their performance. Additionally, through business performance manager sellers will also have access to insights from seller marketplace business performance tools.

Daraz as a platform has spearheaded successful seller empowerment initiatives previously as well and given financial support of up to PKR 8 crore during Covid-19 lockdown and supported 45,000+ sellers previously. With the launch of Ibtida, Daraz aims to empower specifically women, who otherwise might not get as many opportunities to sell with ease in the offline markets due to societal pressure and cultural norms.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021