Nakshi Hat: A Social E-commerce Platform for Empowering Rural Women Artisans

Abstract

The rapid growth of technology has slimmed the way people interact, trade and communicate, and e-commerce serves as a powerful tool for the promotion of small businesses. But rural women artisans in districts such as Jamalpur, Bangladesh, still find it difficult to get digital platforms to sell their hand-crafted items. Even though they are skilled at making traditional items like Nakshi Kantha and handmade garments, they are dependent on local markets or intermediaries, which keeps them disempowered and their income small. Nakshi Hat, a Laravel built social e-commerce platform developed to provide online empowerment to rural women artisans in this regard. It empowers them to sign up as vendors, operate their own digital stores and sell directly to customers in the whole country. Publish features such as secure login simple dashboard to operate, product upload, order management, digital payment, and costumer review. The initiative is aspiring to increase financial inclusion and digital empowerment, less reliance on middlemen, fair pricing and local economic development as well as conservation of legacy handicraft skills by leveraging technology to make artisans market-able to a larger customer base.