Abandoned by her bad tempered husband, Bulbuli Begum, mother of a girl child at Dakhin Ajodhapur in Rangpur, had nothing and nobody to fall back on as her parents had heaved a sigh of relief after marrying her off when she was still a child.
But unlike many others, she was not to give up hope and made up her mind to keep on the fight for survival. She took training in crafts, started to make shoes, wall-mate and floor-mate from jute, and supplied them to local a showroom for sale.
She thus earned her living, but not as much as she thought she could because her business was limited to the sale at the showroom.
Luckily, during a local exhibition, she met one Arifuzzaman Moon, an agent of online market place Ek-Shop, who showed her how to sell her products for better prices on the virtual platform.
Bulbuli is now one of the hundreds marginal entrepreneurs selling their goods across the country and even outside the country using the assisted e-commerce market place Ek-Shop.
Who are the beneficiary?
The marginal producers and consumers from rural areas are often deprived of the facility of the country’s rising e-commerce industry. They thus do not get the same profit as they would get if they could sell their goods in city market.
The consumers are also forced to buy those goods from middlemen at high prices.
Ek-Shop has is trying to bridge this gap between the marginal entrepreneurs and the buyers.
Since its inception in February 2018, the platform served three lakh people with 41,000 transactions involving Tk4.17 crore.
“Despite having enough capacity, I could not produce as much as I could as I had to depend solely on the showroom,” Bulbuli told Dhaka Tribune.
"Besides, it was arduous and time consuming to look for new clients. Now, there is no limit for orders as the Ek-Shop made the scope for selling unlimited goods," she said.
"I earn Tk30,000 a month, which was limited to Tk10,000 when my supply was limited to the showroom," Bubuli recalled.
Not only craft, one can even sell vegetable and other goods on the platform.
“I used to sell crops through brokers at wholesale markets, which would cost me a lot as I had to pay commission on sales and bear transportation costs,” Habibur Rahman, a farmer from Jessore, told Dhaka Tribune.
"Now, the Ek-Shop agent collects crops including banana, cucumber, eggplant and pointed gourd from the farmland and pay back within two to three days. It pays more than brokers," said Habib.
Along with the producers, the platform has also created income opportunity for the agents.
"As an agent, in last winter I started uploading information on date jaggery, corps and fishes, which led to additional income beside that of the Union Digital Centre (UDC)," said Mizanur Rahman of Jessore.
Rahman earns Tk30,000 a month from the source.
Besides, there is also opportunity to buy goods on behalf of customers of rural areas.
“Because of small number of electronic gadgets in rural markets, the opportunity for e-commerce is huge in the areas,” Arifuzzan Moon of Rangpur told Dhaka Tribune.
"Though I started with traditional goods, there is huge buy orders for electronic gadget; it helps to earn Tk7,000 to Tk10,000 a month," he added.
What is Ek-Shop?
Ek-Shop is an aggregated assisted e-commerce platform developed by a2i Bangladesh to extend the benefit of e-commerce to rural people and to reduce the gap of communication between industry stakeholders.
It enables a marginalized rural entrepreneur especially women without internet access, who produces several traditional handicrafts and of the goods, to connect buyers and sell it trough the virtual platform.
It also helps rural people to buy goods. Ek-Shop itself does not have any product. It is connected with large e-commerce companies.
How Ek-Shop works
There are 5,297 UDCs across the country, of which 3,347 are connected with the Ek-Shop platform. A buyer or a seller of a good can place orders through the representative of a UDC.
In selling a product, the producer has to place the product's specifications to the UDC representative to upload it on Ek-Shop web page, which will show in all e-commerce pages linked with Ek-Shop and one can buy it from anywhere in the country.
Up on receiving the orders, the UDC will collect the products and send it to client's address through delivery system.
In ensuring safe delivery, there is a pool of logistic providers partners including Bangladesh Post Office (BPO) to deliver the goods to every corner of the country.
In buying a good, UDC on behalf their respective union people, according to their need, places orders through Ek-Shop and delivers it to customers.
In both buying or selling, an agent will receive commission for each ordered good, which will not be added to products' prices.
Why ek shop?
“Despite having sharp and significant growth of e-commerce in the country, only 30% of the total population, who live in urban areas, are the beneficiary of it, as a result the growth of the growing sector is not a sustained one,” Rezwanul Haque Jami, head of e-commerce, a2i, told Dhaka Tribune.
In the year 2018, e-commerce sector registered a 75% growth to Tk3,262 cror, which was Tk1,864 crore in the previous year, e-CAB data showed.
"Now 70% people live in the rural area and are engaged in agriculture. E-commerce can play an important role for the development of these people by providing them with the scope to sell their goods through the virtual platform," said Jami.
Considering the importance of e-commerce in bringing rural people under the coverage and attaining SDGs especially goal Leaving no One Behind by 2030, the government took the initiatives, said Jami also vice-president of e-CAB.
Digital Feriwala or Micro Merchants
In bringing more people under the coverage of Ek-Shop, the government has taken an initiative to create 20,000 micro merchants called Digital Feriwala in rural e-commerce industry to provide doorstep service by 2020. These Digital Feriwala will work with UDC.
These merchants will collect goods from rural producers, especially women, and upload their specifications on Ek-Shop pace through UDC for selling through e-commerce companies linked with the virtual platform.
Similarly, they will also take orders from the rural people and deliver goods door to door.
In this regards, a pilot project is going on in Jamalpur, Mymensing, Sirajganj and Nilphamari with 500 women micro merchants.
These merchant would given financial support to buy low cost smartphone for the Digital Feriwala.
What next
Most of payment is done through cash on delivery (COD) system. For ease in payment disbursement for both buyer and seller ends, Ek-Shop already made arrangements to launch two new payment method — ESCROW and SSL wireless payment such as master card and visa card.
Beyond this, Ek-Shop is planning to set up “call centres” to provide 24/7 support service for users in case of any problems.
It also plans to take it to beyond the boarder and introduce in 27 countries by 2020.