Featuring
Afeef Zaman, CEO
Ataur Chowdhury, CTO
and Siffat Sarwar, CCO
*An Insightful Interview With The ShopUp Core Team
ShopUp raised $1.62million in investments. What are the plans for allocation of this fund?
The funding we raised recently will be used to enhance the core technology infrastructure of ShopUp’s credit algorithm, accelerate acquisition to 100,000 merchants, and establish partnerships with e-commerce players, logistics companies, and offline aggregators.
Our entire focus is geared towards ensuring financial inclusion of people who lack access to formal credit services, and therefore are unable to scale their small businesses.
ShopUp was gifted $25,000 as the runner up in the Inclusion Plus competition hosted by MetLife Foundation which aims at awarding funds to entrepreneurs to scale up their innovative projects. How would you say, ShopUp is changing the e-commerce scene in Bangladesh?
Once we entered the e-commerce scene, we recognized problems in multiple areas. One of them, with which we have been working on, was the lack of access to finance which stifled the growth of many potential micro businesses.
Another was the basic knowledge and seed money needed to start an online business from ground 0.
The fund from Inclusion Plus will be utilized to help home-based entrepreneurs and individuals start their online businesses through building better communication channels and collaborative partnerships with suppliers.
What is the most challenging aspect of your job? Alternatively, what is the most rewarding part of it?
The most challenging part would be getting your clients to believe in themselves as much as we believe in them. We see a lot of entrepreneurs whose biggest obstacle to growth is underestimating their own potential.
The most rewarding part of course is to see them excel and surpass their own expectations. We’ve had some remarkable success stories, which means way more to us than whatever we’ve done with our own careers till date!
The goal for ShopUp was to help finance 2000 entrepreneurs this year. Has ShopUp accomplished what it set out to do? What can ShopUp users – consumers and entrepreneurs alike, expect in 2019?
2019 will see significant expansion in our efforts to facilitate access to flexible and affordable credit – the key to unlocking growth in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector in emerging markets.
What are the reasons behind you believing that women entrepreneurs are more likely to give back to the community?
We have read research and case reports that showed that women knowingly or unknowingly end up contributing more to the community, and in our case, we have observed this first hand.
Grameen Bank for instance observed that women borrowers spent their money in ways that help their families. When women took on small loans, they did not squander their money on food or luxuries as men did. Instead, they used their funds to buy some chickens, a cow or some seeds. They put the money they made selling the resulting vegetables, eggs or milk into providing more food for their malnourished children or for sending them to school. Thus, they were able, over time, to improve their families’ diet and education, contributing to the cycle of poverty alleviation.
In our case, we started working with online shops, which were mostly run by women who were not being able or unwilling to work outside their homes.
The obvious outcome was that suddenly, women who were forced to move out of work were financially independent – they were able to earn for themselves, and therefore spend as per their desire – be it for new books for their children, better food for their families, or better healthcare for themselves.
In case Facebook were to shut down what would happen to these Facebook Commerce (F-commerce)? Is there a contingency plan should such an event ever happen?
Digital commerce is largely dependent on people being able to communicate with others digitally. Facebook is not just a showcase platform, but also a means of broadcasting to vast communities and communicating with potential clients.
We consistently advise our merchants to maintain communication with their clients over the phone, through WhatsApp or at pop up fairs.
In addition, we are in the process of setting up collaboration with major market places by gaining access to their websites, so that our micro merchants can sell products on those sites too.
What sets ShopUp apart from its competitors? Where do you see the company in the next 5 years?
This is a huge space, a sector where no number of organizations coming in to solve the problems can be said to be enough. The more the number of players are, the better, because there is a lot of work to be done if credit can be made available easily and affordably to people who deserve it. We happily welcome anyone in the sector to collaborate with us – because perhaps, if we work together, we can get there faster. There is power in numbers after all.
