The rapid COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdowns led to major hurdles and disruptions for almost all businesses in India. The Facebook Future of Business study, done in association with OECD and World Bank, clearly indicated how SMBs owned by women were more likely to report closure owing to the pandemic, considering business sizes, geographies and sectors. The study also revealed how many women are disproportionately taking on the burden of work and domestic duties alike while finance access has always been a major challenge in the MSME space. The same report has also shown how 1/3rd of Indian small businesses expect cash flows to be challenging in the near future.
Similarly, studies have also indicated how women business leaders displayed more flexibility in their business models as a response towards the coronavirus pandemic and were more than likely to make 50% of sales via digital platforms. Director-Small and Medium Businesses, Facebook India, Archana Vohra, laid out various programs implemented for helping businesses cope better in this period. She stated that Managed Partners Program has helped mid-tier entities scale up and grow better via third party-partner based support in account management. This is free of cost for customers and 16X more entities have been enabled from March, 2020.
Advertiser Bootcamp makes up another flagship strategy, providing deep business learning assistance via custom English and Hindi content and masterclasses. It has touched 15 million customers through this platform. The VC Brand Incubator Program works in tandem with VC (venture capital) funds for scaling up younger brands and has just completed two years. It has already tied up with nine VC funds in this period and scaled 200+ businesses in the early funding stage. Vohra has also stated how women showed leadership, resilience and optimism in these tough times, creating double as many fundraisers on Facebook as men and making twice as many charitable donations. 64% of total funds were raised from women according to her.
Women have also created 2.7X more groups that are COVID-19 related, as compared to men with the member counts going four times higher. Women continued starting new businesses with 20% of Instagram Business profiles from November 2020 containing the words women/female owned. Several women entrepreneurs have been tapping into the power of social media for finding new customers and building user communities. The Founder at Wingreens Farms, Anju Srivastava, stated that they have launched 30+ new products with Instagram and Facebook as the primary brand awareness channels, helping build a close-knit online community.
Co-Founder and COO at Square Yards, Kanika Gupta Shori, stated that the first step for the brand was to instantly tap all technology abilities and energies for creating a one-stop integrated digital platform with a view towards enabling home buyers to view or search chosen projects and also book and make payments for their chosen units from home itself. She added that within a few days of the nationwide lockdown, Square Yards pulled off its digital platform and evolved the entire business model to ensure that the quarter between April-June, 2020, ended on a major high. Square Yards actually garnered 20% of overall market share in this period, making it one of the company’s best quarterly results till date according to her.
Vasavi Polimera, Founder at Studio Shreshtha, stated that WhatsApp Business helped the brand immensely. It made sure that in case customers could not reach the brand, the company reached out to people subsequently. The catalogue feature also made sure that new products were launched smoothly while existing options were showcased simultaneously.
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Published Date : September 7, 2021
