Flipkart & Ministry of Rural Development sign MoU to bring Women-led businesses into E-Commerce Fold

By: WE Staff | Wednesday, 3 November 2021

Walmart-owned Flipkart and the Ministry of Rural Development signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihood Mission (DAY-NRLM) programme, which aims to bring local businesses and self-help groups (SHGs), particularly those led by women, into the e-commerce fold. The partnership, according to Flipkart, is in line with the DAY-mission NRLM's of increasing rural communities' self-employment and entrepreneurship capabilities.

The Memorandum of Understanding is part of Flipkart's Samarth programme, which aims to help skilled but underserved communities of craftsmen, weavers, and artisans sell online through the Flipkart marketplace while also providing e-commerce knowledge and training in areas such as onboarding, cataloguing, marketing, account management, business insights, and warehousing. According to the firm, the DAY-NRLM initiative has organised 7.84 crore women into more than 71 lakh SHGs with its outreach in 6,768 blocks of 706 districts across all 28 states and 6 union territories.

Poor women from SHGs and their federations receive financial, economic, and social development services as part of the initiative, which aims to improve their income and quality of life. "SHGs are the backbone of the rural economy and we are targeting to enhance their annual income to at least 1 lakh. We are identifying and collaborating with all possible partners who can contribute to this cause and a partnership between DAY NRLM and Flipkart will help in the process," Minister of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Giri Raj Singh said in a statement.

Flipkart claimed the Samarth initiative, which was launched in 2019, is presently supporting the livelihoods of over 9,50,000 artisans, weavers, and craftspeople across India, and that it is trying to bring even more merchants into the marketplace. "The crafts of India's local artisans, weavers, and self-help groups deserve to reach a far wider audience, including and beyond their respective regions. The Flipkart Samarth initiative provides them with access to potentially more than 350 million consumers on our platform spread across the country," said Rajneesh Kumar, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Flipkart Group.