Women piggyback on net to fight resource crunch

Bhubaneswar: For several young women entrepreneurs who have multiple wants such as funding and space and struggle to set up their ventures are looking to cyberspace, especially social media platforms, to fight the hiccups.
Priyanka Aggrawal and Ekta Maheshwari, young business women from Cuttack, are examples of how the social media has come to the aid of these people who are eager to have their own startup amid limited resources. The duo has now jumped onto the bandwagon to make their career in innovative customized designed products to woo consumers. They also portray their products in some exhibitions.
The duo jointly started their venture with the name “Oaks and Pines” in May this year. It started as an outlet on the popular e-commerce websites. Yet they have started designer products to the consumers.
“We started this in May this year with limited resources. We are offering designer calendars, customized gifts, decorative items and other things. A number of these are customized. Many of them are made by us while others we tried using graphics and others to give them attractive looks,” said Ekta.
Priyanka told Orissa POST that without any physical presence in the market, they have roped in social media platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp to do their business. Interested consumers can interact with them, see their wide range of products and buy from them. They claim such a system has aided many young entrepreneurs lot during their initial outreach programmes.
There are many others too who are using the cyberspace to build their small scale business and penetrate the market. Sanju Sharma is another young entrepreneur from the city who is into selling brass metal crafts, imported from Rajasthan. She is selling these under the name of ‘Bonochore’.
“We are bringing in excellent designed brass metal craft which could be used for home décor. These are very good products not found normally in this region. But we are not selling it through outlets. We are using Facebook and Instagram to reach out to people and with our products,” Sharma said.
Many of other similar budding business women told us that social media usage gave them a good platform to reach out to a large number of people with minimal cost so that they can keep the costs of their products affordable besides the option of reducing losses due to lesser liabilities. Several social media groups on different products are now coming up to buy and sell products locally and even to outside states, coming as a boon for small scale ventures.