India’s first and largest managed marketplace, ShopClues signed an MoU with National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation (NMDFC) to give a robust fillip to its e-Karobar initiative.
The initiative seeks to e-market the exceptional products created by Indian artisans and craftsmen belonging to minorities who have been assisted by NMDFC. ShopClues will leverage the power of its widely popular e-commerce platform and its extensive reach to empower the artisans and craftsmen belonging to minorities by bridging the gap between artisans and buyers all over the country.
As a part of the MoU, both ShopClues and NMDFC seek to act as catalysts for economic development of artisans and craftsmen belonging to minorities. ShopClues will offer a wide spectrum of assistances to sellers to upgrade the quality of products through adoption of new technology and processes.
It will aid artisans and craftsmen belonging to minorities to sharpen their marketing skills and develop capacity through training. It will also help them update their catalogue periodically and intimate them through e-mail, SMS and or telephone about orders from buyers.
ShopClues will provide classroom training (through phone/Skype) to the vendors on a variety of subjects including merchandising, quality management, packaging, soft skilling and shipping of products.
In addition, the products made by NMDFC beneficiaries will get a separate page E-Karobar on the marketplace.
“We are pleased and honored to be able to boost the business of NMDFC beneficiaries by capitalizing on the power of e-commerce in India. ShopClues’ vision and philosophy is to empower small and medium businesses, local manufacturers, traders and craftsmen to participate in India’s e-commerce revolution and sell to a pan-India customer base. With this MoU we inch many steps closer to this overall objective,” said Director – Categories ShopClues, Raunak Raheja.
While at the same time the beneficiaries of NMDFC face several challenges when it comes to tapping the full potential of the Internet.
The objective of this MoU is to provide minority artisans and craftsmen with an online marketing platform, training, and customer acquisition techniques to help them get remunerative prices for their products and scale up their business and achieve better standard of living in addition to dignity of labor.
The prime mandate of NMDFC is to provide concessional finance to the Minorities for self-employment/ income generation activities. The activities undertaken by the NMDFC for economic empowerment of the Minority group includes providing concessional financial assistance, organizing skill development training and assisting beneficiaries in marketing of their products.