The Stories of Women Entrepreneurs on Amazon

The glass ceiling that once limited a woman’s career path has paved a new road towards business ownership, where women can use their business acumen to create products and offer services that delight consumers. This has been accelerated by e-commerce, which provides women entrepreneurs with a host of opportunities to use the internet to build and run scalable businesses. There are various benefits associated with e-commerce, which are especially useful for women entrepreneurs. These include increased flexibility and the option for women to run businesses on their own terms and in their own time. E-commerce also helps address the barriers associated with running a business, bringing down the need for heavy investments, and enabling women entrepreneurs to reach consumers nationally and even on a global scale.

Over the years, women entrepreneurs have emerged as an important group, part of the 7 lakh sellers present on Amazon.in. They have been able to witness great success on the online marketplace as part of programs that Amazon has instituted for these sellers to offer them various benefits- including Amazon Saheli, Amazon Launchpad and Amazon Global Selling. Below are the stories of women sellers across programs who have leveraged e-commerce across these programs to run successful businesses;

Ritika Agarwal, To be Honest- Amazon Launchpad

To be Honest’ is a Noida based 100% real fruit & veggie snacks brand that sells both offline and through e-commerce. The business has been associated with Amazon for over a year, and its presence on the marketplace helped the co-founder Ritika, balance the disruption caused by the pandemic. With Amazon, the business has managed to get orders from remote corners of the country, which would otherwise have taken years to achieve through the offline retail channel. During the lockdown, when traditional channels had seen a decline, the company grew its sales by 3X on Amazon.

“The ability to reach a wider set of customers across India is one of the biggest benefits gained through Amazon. In the past 3 years, we established our presence in 3 metros and 1500 stores, but with Amazon, we have been able to expand our reach much further even to the smallest of the cities in India. Such rapid growth would have otherwise taken us almost five years, without e-commerce and Amazon. For every one rupee spent on Amazon, we register an RoI of almost 10 rupees. The simple and direct manner of functioning makes it a viable option for small businesses”, according to Ritika Agrawal, Co-founder, To be Honest.

Monali Patel, Prapti Handicrafts- Amazon Saheli

Named after her daughter, Monali founded Prapti Handicrafts in 2014 – a home-based small scale company that makes handmade jewellery, accessories and more using beadwork, crochet and hand embroidery. The positive feedback from her family encouraged her to dedicate herself wholeheartedly to the business. Monali registered as a seller on Amazon in 2015, and soon joined Amazon’s Saheli program. As a part of the program, she was able to brand and market her products on Amazon.in under the guidance of a team of experts. In the years that followed, Prapti Handicrafts has witnessed 3x growth year-on-year and has achieved popularity with customers – both online and offline. Presently, Prapti Handicrafts is working with women from rural India, empowering their financial independence.

“We could feel the impact of the pandemic at the beginning as our products were non-essentials. As a result of the Stand For Handmade initiative, we had good sales and registered 3x growth which helped us recoup the losses” said Monali Patel, Founder, Prapti Handicrafts, an Amazon Saheli seller. said Monali Patel, Founder of Prapti Handicrafts.

Mudita Todi, Jackinthebox- Amazon Global Selling

Mudita Todi Ajmera and her husband Ashish Ajmera set up Jackinthebox in 2015 to make toys that nurture the curiosity, creativity, and imagination of children through carefully planned activities. They realized that there is a gap between the changing attention span of children and toys that cater to them, creating their company to address this.  The larger vision for this company was to make it a global brand, which drove Mudita and Ashish to register with Amazon Global Selling. Since joining the program, Jackinthebox has lakhs of customers across 15 countries &  have now listed their products in the US, Canada, Germany, & UAE. The company’s revenue has grown 2x year-on-year and it is now competing with some of the biggest names in the sector. Jackinthebox is among the top Craft Toy brands in the world with their Made in India products loved by customers across the world.

“It’s magical to see the opportunity that Amazon provides to small businesses dreaming to make it big. Direct customer interactions and feedback have contributed immensely to our business. We saw Jackinthebox grow every year. We can finally say with confidence that we are on the path to achieving our vision of being India’s first global toy brand. The joy and satisfaction of seeing our women employees’ lives transformed by enabling financial independence through Jackinthebox is unparalleled. We are a proud women-centric, women-run company with a vision to be the leading brand of creative toys in the world”, said Mudita Todi, Co-founder, Jackinthebox