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Manisha Meem Nipun, a member of the transgender community, has changed myths about the transgender community by becoming an entrepreneur, overcoming social barriers and financial troubles.
Social barriers were about to beleaguer the dream of Nipun, but her incisive determination has led her to reach the goal with the help of e-commerce platform 'Anondomela'. This social platform virtually helped Nipun to create an identity for her as entrepreneur, reports BSS.
Anondomela, an online marketplace of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for entrepreneurs, has created linkages between entrepreneurs and marketplace that helps the country's small entrepreneurs get self-reliant by offering fair prices and various selling options.
“I had a dream to become an entrepreneur. I have been working as an executive director of the ‘Pathchola Foundation’. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was essential to do another thing for bearing my expenses,” said Nipun, a dweller of Khulshi area under the Chattogram city.
In this situation, online platform 'Anondomela' became a ray of hope in Nipun’s life. Through the platform, Nipun is now running her business.
Not only Nipun, another four people of her community have become entrepreneurs through taking facilities of the e-commerce platform.
Now, Niopun is running her business from home with reputation.
She said easy access to information and communication technology (ICT) immensely helped people across the country in overcoming the hardships rendered by the Covid-19 pandemic, thanks to implementation of 'Digital Bangladesh' by the present government.
UNDP has launched Anondomela (www.anondomela.shop) as a free-of-cost alternative marketplace. Entrepreneurs are hosting their products on the site, which allows buyers from the comfort of their homes to order products directly from the SMEs.
Talking to BSS, Additional Secretary of the Commerce Ministry and Head of the E-Commerce Cell AHM Shafiquzzaman said during the miserable days of lockdown and virus panic, normal life and even emergency services were hampered in almost everywhere in the world and Bangladesh was not an exception.
But, the people here enjoyed the blessing of ICT to make their life easier, he added.
He said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's flagship digital Bangladesh campaign opened the door of opportunity in front of the rural women, transgender and marginalized community entrepreneurs as now they can sell their products at fair price easily without exposing to the virus by staying at home.
He said the government is working to run e-commerce sector in a more disciplined way shrugging off recent anomalies by some companies.
"The e-commerce sector gained a fast expansion in the country during the COVID-19 pandemic period beyond our expectations. We are working to operate the sector in a more disciplined way," he added.
He said the government is providing training to the entrepreneurs, especially the women entrepreneurs to run their business through e-commerce platform smoothly.
He informed that UNDP, through its Anondomela and SWAPNO projects, is providing capacity building training.
By search engine optimization, UNDP Gender Analyst Sharmin Islam said they are trying to reach their entrepreneurs’ products all over the country and also across the world.
“I can give an example, i.e. one customer from abroad searches for jamdani shirt and the first google search comes out Anondomelashop’s jamdani entrepreneur’s jamdani shirt for boys and men. We have API connectivity with Ekshop which allows us to showcase products globally and also these products are also available in other networks of ekshop too like Daraz bd, priyo shop, etc,” she added.
She said “I am happy to say that anondomela platform has specified categories for disabled entrepreneurs, transgender entrepreneurs, marginalized community entrepreneurs so that we can promote them specifically and customers also can support them by buying products from these categories.”
Along with social barriers, she said, they have faced all other challenges of CMSMEs as well. “We have also chosen some disabled and transgender entrepreneurs and gave them smart phones so that they can run their business online as a pilot program”, she added.
She said they are getting training for e- commerce also. “Next, we have planned to design training modules and capacity building trainings for disabled entrepreneurs. We have planned to initiate advocacy on credit facilities for them,” he added.