Karachi: Daraz, the leading e-commerce platform in Pakistan, has announced the launch of “Ibtida” on this International Women’s Day with the mission to empower local female entrepreneurs on its platform. Ibtida is a program that will enable women to establish online shopping stores on Daraz and take advantage of the platform’s hundreds of thousands daily active users, generate higher sales and grow their businesses.

This initiative is a promising source of sustainable income for small and large business owners to get access to e-commerce technology during these challenging economic times and will empower females to run their own stores while sitting at home.

Daraz as a platform has spearheaded successful seller empowerment initiatives previously as well and given financial support of up to PKR 8 crore during COVID lockdown and supported 45,000+ sellers previously. With the launch of Ibtida, Daraz aims to empower specifically women, who otherwise might not get as many opportunities to sell with ease in the offline markets due to societal pressure and cultural norms.

Through this program, Daraz offers 0% commission, free packaging and storage to female sellers for the 90-day incubation period. The sellers will also have access to Daraz University which is a customized learning center to help sellers belonging to different cohorts improve their performance. Register for Online Selling in Pakistan with Daraz Today!

Additionally, through business performance manager sellers will also have access to insights from seller marketplace business performance tools.

In line with International Women’s Day’s theme for the year, “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world,” Daraz also steps forward to celebrate efforts by women and extends its support to shape a more equal future during recovery from COVID-19 pandemic. Even though women were at the forefront of the battle against COVID, they were paid 11% less than men. This initiative that has been launched by the platform will add to the efforts made for gender equal future.

“Women get a lot less opportunities than men; and even when they do get an opportunity, there is either a descrimination either in the form of salary or the responsibility/trust that is placed upon women. We want to change that. Women are equally capable of doing whatever men do and hence should be compensated equally.” Said Arusha Imtiaz – Global Head of Seller Marketplace at Daraz.

She also further added that, “There are a lot of talented women who can make something as simple as a scarf while sitting at their homes and start earning money. They don’t do that right now, because there aren’t a lot of options to start online businesses in Pakistan right now and selling in the offline markets is a concept that is not acceptable for women in our society. But this is unfair and unacceptable. With Daraz Ibtida, we want to encourage female sellers to start online businesses.”

Daraz provides services to more than 5 million customers every month as they are looking forward to this initiative bringing a unique and diverse product range for its customers.