E-commerce brings enormous business opportunities for women in Bangladesh

E-commerce brings enormous business opportunities for women as it makes 24/7 business possible. The growth of e-commerce helps the women entrepreneur to generate new ideas and work from home. There is tremendous growth of women entrepreneurs in e-commerce sector.

E-commerce impacts on business and productivity significantly. It creates a large prospect for economic advancement. E-commerce (Electronic commerce) is a big hit in today’s market. E-commerce is an abbreviation for electronic commerce.

E-commerce is that the purchase and sale of products and services over the net. E-commerce is a term used to describe the shift from a regular market to a digital marketplace.

The world is now becoming technology based and everything is now online. Everyone can buy or sell or get services from the online platforms.
The online platforms were boosted more during the COVID-19 situation. Most of the people now become dependent on online platforms.

E-commerce is also expanding rapidly in Bangladesh. Specially, a revolutionary change has taken place in this sector during the COVID-19 period as the number of women entrepreneurs also increased during this period in this sector.

However, a big shock came in this sector due to chaos in some big online platforms including Evaly. The government has opened Unique Business Identification (UBID) to bring discipline in this sector and most of the owners of the online platforms are women entrepreneurs who got registration in the first phase.

The women entrepreneurs said the female are marching ahead apart from male and many women become self independent through e-commerce though they are facing some problems as most of the places of whole sale markets are not women-friendly till now. They hoped that the situation will be better in the coming days.

Musfera Jahan, an entrepreneur, is a managing director of ‘Mom Fanush’ and chairman of ‘Gerosto Bari’. Her two online platforms got registration in the first phase.

Jahan said she is selling boutiques items, hand paint, block and handmade products from ‘Mom Fanush’ while ready spices are available in ‘Gerosto Bari’.

She said, “I started my online business in 2017. In the beginning it was only online based and I got my family’s support. Now I’m also working offline apart from online.”

Jahan said, “E-commerce is now flourishing as the people depend on online platforms. They preferred the online platforms for selling and buying. Besides, most of the women are doing jobs and they have no enough time to go to market for shopping”.

About the problems of women entrepreneurs, she said women are facing many problems.

“Though our businesses are online-centric, sourcing has to be done offline. I started business with clothes. Now I made a separate platform for spices. I have to bring clothes myself. For this, I’ve to visit different places of the country. As a woman many times I felt insecurity. So, I need to take help from others.”

Another woman entrepreneur Faraha Diba is the owner of ‘nithanbd’. She works with the dresses of male and female including panjabi, baby dress, and fashion accessories.

She said the stories of most of the women entrepreneurs are same. In fact, it is a struggle to open a business independently. Most of the women started their online business at their middle age. But now, many female students come up with online business.

Diba said e-commerce is now becoming an industry and it is a demand of time. “I’ve started business in 2018. And I was fully involved with the market in 2019,” she said.