Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart has partnered with the Indian government‘s Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM) in a bid to empower the artisans from the underserved sections of the society by providing them access to the ecommerce platform.
Under the partnership, Flipkart will work with the government to establish its Flipkart Samarth programme across 22 states in the country. Through this programme, Flipkart will work with self-help groups (SHGs) including local artisans, weavers and crafts producers and producers of raw and organic food items to provide them market access, training and support.
Furthermore, these artisans will also be provided with time-bound incubation support which will include benefits like cataloguing support, account management support and more.
Talking about the partnership, Shri Sanjay Kumar, Joint Secretary and Mission Director, DAY-NULM, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, said, “The collaboration with Flipkart will be instrumental in capacity building of women entrepreneurs in skills of branding, digital marketing and financial management in addition to providing access to wider customer base to locally made high-quality products of Self Help Groups under DAY-NULM.”
This initiative is expected to enable these sellers access to Flipkart’s over 200 million customers across the country. While making the ecommerce space more inclusive, it will also provide these sellers with the capabilities to attain economic and social stability. So far, Flipkart claims to have more than 100,000 MSME sellers on its platform and this move is expected to increase those numbers.
Such partnerships can play an important role in helping the government impart much-needed skill training to the underserved sections of the society by leveraging the domain expertise of private players.