Empower Women The Rilli Tradition

Empower Women in Rural Communities through their craft

Social Entrepreneurs working to find sustainable business models for Kunzah

Year: 2017

How can we use ‘the rilli’ tradition

to help women be income generators

in a rural community of Sindh, Pakistan?

ESADE Final - A sustainable business plan

YEAR: 2016

PROJECT

A team of 3, Anand, Claudia and myself chose to work with Kunzah in Pakistan, to build a business plan with the purpose to empower women to use their traditional craft that creates income generating products.

KUNZAH

VISION is to empower women to revive and sustain ancient traditional art forms by re-educating the world about them, one customer at a time.

Farah Alam founded Kunzah earlier in May 2016, with the intention to build a business that aids collaboration between designers in Pakistan and craftswomen of Pakistan.

The purpose is to create jobs and support the women in building a better life for their families.

In additional to income generation, Kunzah aims to lay the foundations for a sustainable future for the craft and the people it belongs through vocational training.

Kunzah’s Core Competencies are the following:

Concept and Design
Customer focus and client services.

ESADE TEAM

AIM to build a sustainable social business model.

The team is a strong mix of ethnic and professional backgrounds with the common interest to build a sustainable social business.

Understand target group and needs, analyse market potential and production to suggest a sustainable business model that has measurable social and financial impact.

Core Competencies:

Finance
IT
Design

1

APPROACH

Understand & Empathise

Environment: Poverty and unemployment result in massive migration from rural Sindh, Pakistan to Karachi a 23 million people megacity in Pakistan.

Women's skills: Women who are about half the potential workforce are very skilled in embroidery, quilting (rilli making) and stitching. However, they are unable to earn money due to family and local customs. As a result:

1. Their skills are losing importance which makes it harder to pass down from generation to generation.

2. The male members have to earn for average families of 8 people (usually includes elders)

Craft: We did a deep dive on Rilli Making

What is it: Rilli is a traditional handmade quilt or bedsheet that dates back thousands of years to the Indus Civilisation. It is a method of storytelling as well as using symbols and patterns to identify families and communities.

Product Potential: Kunzah worked with Khazaana, an NGO in Karachi to access these women and prototype first set of designs

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2

Analyse production method and key partner

Production: We identified that time to production is long and can further be delayed due to non-predictable environmental and family driven problems.

The craft we are looking to work with is time-consuming so needs to be a balance of quantity ordered delivery time and price.

3

Compare B2C & B2B

Market Potential: B2C

Opportunity

Global growth of handmade product sale is predicted at 13%
Consumers are increasingly socially conscious of the things they buy and use
Many success stories such as PopnJay, The Good Earth and Fashion Compassion in the home decor and apparel industry
Large online marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon are selling handmade crafts

Challenges

E-Commerce infrastructure in Pakistan is not mature - majority cash on demand
Extremely fragmented online and offline market
Saturated market needs Point of differentiation
Quality is of the utmost importance to sell at a price premium
Production needs to take into account safety and sustainability of raw materials Small orders cannot sustain the model
Marketing costs for customer acquisition in an e-commerce/marketplace model is high.

Market Potential: B2B

Opportunity:

Within the B2B market, we looked at a wide range of products that match our core competencies and the feasibility of our production environment, such as: Textiles, Packaging, Footwear and Home Décor

Global trend showing retailers and companies spending more on packaging to sell at a premium price.
Increasing consumption and hence need for packaging would increase in Pakistan.
Bulk orders lower risk of holding inventory.
3 potential segments to target: Bulk/commodity, semi-premium and premium.

Challenges

Getting the first customer
The work culture is slow, hence, the time to reach the market could not be accurately estimated.
Since, we also have an NGO as the most important supplier ensuring trust and corresponding negotiations have been tough. This directly affects the margins made depending on the segments that we decide to target
Many businesses in Pakistan are home based for which no documentation is available. Estimation of such a market becomes extremely difficult.

Key Partner: In August 2016, Kunzah and Khazaana signed an agreement whereby Khazaana would work with Kunzah on designs and production of products.

Designs made by Kunzah could not be sold to other buyers or sold from their end without the Kunzah brand on it.
Khazaana agreed to cover initial costs and keeps inventory for Kunzah, as Kunzah did not have warehouse space.

However, as they have significant control of the production (complete cycle) and timing of production, we believe this leaves Kunzah in a weak position itself.

OUTCOME

Focus on B2B - packaging for semi-premium retailers and businesses

Products Prototyped: We then worked with Khazaana to prototype bags and pouches to show potential customers and get feedback.