By M Saraswathy, Mumbai – Shaifali Aggarwal, a single woman in New Delhi, always found it difficult finding people to carry out household repairs. Even if she had to get a door-lock repaired, she often waited for around one-and-a-half months, as she, being a working woman, never got the time to get them fixed. It was then that an idea clicked in her mind, and she decided to start a service for renting a carpenter, plumber and electrician. Her plans took shape when she launched a portal, easyfix.in, in March 2011, and since then she has never looked back. Now, her portal receives about 30 calls a day from the initial 5 calls a day, and the number of calls is growing.

Mallika Sreekumar, Founder of Waves Hair, found her calling in the business of Indian human hair exports when she had gone to Brazil. There, she saw buyers purchasing human hair from India, via the internet, and she immediately registered herself on the online portal of Alibaba.com.“After interacting with the women buyers in that country, I understood that as a woman I would be able to understand their preferences better,” says Sreekumar. Her business is export-oriented, and she is using Alibaba.com as a channel to run the business. Today, Waves Hair is managed entirely by a team of women, and it has close to a $1 million turnover.

Personal experiences and financial stability and growth through e-commerce route have prompted Aggarwal, Sreekumar and a few other women to start their businesses using the internet. Shanaya Modi of Mazda imbibed the entrepreneurial spirit from her family, which is into the engineering business. “For me, being a Gujarati, it is the most natural thing to do. And what other markets (could I have chosen) than the e-commerce space, where buyers and sellers are in abundance and the transaction is cheaper,” said Modi. Sreekumar informs that the number of prospective customers, whom she is able to contact, is tremendous.

Site analysis on Alibaba.com recently showed that its women membership base has seen a healthy growth of 71 per cent year-on-year basis. Modi, director of Mazda Ltd, is in the business of food processing and conducts her business almost entirely on the internet. “The most critical benefit that I have derived from the internet and e-commerce is that it removes gender bias as the online medium gives us a layer of invisibility. With such platforms, we can break the socio-economic barriers prevalent in our society,” she says. E-commerce has facilitated her in getting customers from Russia, UK, UAE, Saudi Arabia and the US.

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