Kaarvan Crafts Foundation, which provides livelihood generation skills to women in rural Pakistan, has partnered with Dukan to create e-commerce stores for female artisans.
Both Karvaan and Dukan share the goal of empowering women with economic resources, equal opportunities, self-freedom, and sustainable growth to live their lives with dignity.
Kaarvan has a network of 25,000 women who run micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) across 22 districts in more than 1000 towns and villages across Pakistan.
They sell handicrafts and other hand-made items from locally sourced materials such as Embroidered Crafts, Fancy Dresses, Home Textile & Decor, Bags & Pouches, and Jewelry, etc.
Pakistan’s e-commerce market has grown significantly due to the increased penetration of online payments, logistics, and connected smartphones.
Small sellers, particularly in remote and rural areas of the country are struggling to take advantage of the digital opportunity.
Dukan is providing Karvaan’s micro-entrepreneurs with e-commerce training on its free mobile app that allows them to easily create online stores with global reach while removing complexities related to technology, e-payments, and delivery.
Some of these newly created online stores were show-cased by 30 women entrepreneurs from rural areas of Multan during a two-day-long exhibition recently held at Emporium Mall, Lahore held on July 2-3 in collaboration with UN Women.
Explaining his struggle to alleviate the problems faced by low-income strata of the society, Co-founder and CEO Dukan, Monis Rahman, remarked,
“Pakistan’s progress lies in uplifting our marginalized communities. Women, especially in rural areas of the country, have great potential but need support to become effective participants in our economy. Dukan is doing exactly that by providing these micro-entrepreneurs with easy-to-use local language technology tools which will allow them to participate in the rapidly growing digital economy.”
CEO Kaarvan Crafts Foundation, Mr. Danish Jabbar Khan said,
“We are committed to providing sustainable livelihoods to these women entrepreneurs. Dukan is a powerful platform to achieve this goal by allowing our MSMEs to gain easy access to global digital markets in a manner that they can understand.”
Led by a team of industry veterans, Dukan is a mobile application that provides local businesses and sellers with a free, easy, and yet powerful platform to set up their web stores and sell online.
