India has thousands of ethnic craftsmen, handicraft workers, and other such local entrepreneurs who can no longer run their offline presence as a business. But they cannot sell their wares online because they don’t possess the know-how for setting up a payment gateway. Most of these small businesses are not even digitally savvy enough to know that they can sell on popular marketplaces like Amazon. This is the gap that Visa’s Bring India Home initiative seeks to fill.
What’s the Bring India Home platform by Visa?
‘Bring India Home’ is a digital platform being launched by Visa which will take offline artisans and small businesses to the digital space. It will facilitate online shopping for these small businesses. BIH is a support initiative by the financial services company which will also serve as an educational platform to handhold the stakeholders in their digital transformation journey.
How BIH will help artisans and small businesses go digital
BIH will help artisans and small businesses go digital by helping them attract new consumers through incentives. Visa will also conduct instructional sessions for small businesses to educate them about digital payments, transactions, and about digital marketing techniques.
Motive behind the initiative
The ‘Bring India Home’ initiative is in line with Visa’s global commitment to support over 50 Mn small businesses on digital. It’s also aimed at supporting the small business fraternity in India to create jobs for the Indian economy. Since consumers are now spending online, Visa wants to bridge the gap between local artisans and small businesses with digital purchases.
Benefits for small businesses
Small businesses will be able to expand their product reach to digital shoppers. Local artisans will also be able to give millions of online Indian consumers access to their unique, Made-in-India products. Small businesses and artisans will be successfully able to survive and revive during the pandemic and beyond by taking the digital route.
Scope of the initiative
The Bring India Home Initiative will cover 17 Indian states in India and will empower local artisans and small businesses in these states to list their products online. It will bring exposure to their products to online shoppers in India and thus facilitate digital sales for these small businesses which were previously offline.
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BIH is a support initiative by the financial services company which will also serve as an educational platform to handhold the stakeholders in their digital transformation journey.
What’s in it for me?
Visa’s is one of the largest global card issuers and one of the largest payment networks worldwide. In India, they’ve had a long and strong presence as a foreign card network which has further strengthened after their recent compliance of RBI’s (Reserve Bank of India) data localisation rules. As such, they are a veteran in India’s fintech sector. Visa has been actively coming up with a slew of initiatives to support the fintech industry like the ‘Visa Fintech initiative’ for fintech start-ups in India.
Ever since the pandemic broke out, Visa has been an active campaigner for the small business sector alongside other tech giants like Amazon. Before BHI, they had announced a partnership with ‘iFundWomen’, a marketplace for women-owned businesses and launched a grant programme to support women entrepreneurs in India. Bring India Home is a part of these initiatives. They have been very vocal towards supporting the small business community worldwide. Start-ups and small businesses particularly in the Fintech sector and other industries can expect more such initiatives from the payment giant.
