On International Women’s Day, Daraz announced the launch of “Ibtida,” a forum dedicated to empowering local female entrepreneurs. Ibtida is a software that enables women to open online shopping stores on Daraz and leverage the platform’s hundreds of thousands of daily active users to increase revenue and expand their businesses.
During these difficult economic times, this project is a potential source of sustainable income for small and large business owners to gain access to ecommerce technology, and it will enable women to operate their own stores while sitting at home.
Daraz offers female sellers a 0% commission, free packaging, and storage during the 90-day incubation cycle via this programme. The sellers will also have access to Daraz University, a specialised learning centre that will assist sellers from various cohorts in improving their results. Sellers will also have access to feedback from seller marketplace business performance tools through the business performance manager.
Daraz has previously led fruitful seller empowerment programmes, providing financial assistance of up to PKR 8 crore during the Covid-19 lockdown and supporting over 45,000 sellers. Daraz hopes that by launching Ibtida, it will empower women who, due to social pressure and cultural norms, might not have as many opportunities to sell easily in offline markets.