By Ruchi Aggarwal | Qualitative Researcher
“I sold out each and every packet of candles last Diwali, people were excited to see the amazing packaging”, says Navnath, 31 year old entrepreneur who runs a candle-making enterprise in a small village, Falgun Gavhan in Maharashtra. With donations from you, we have designed, printed and delivered packaging materials, visiting cards, brochures, brand tags, banners and accounts books for many of our 67 entrepreneurs across India.
That’s what we do at Be! Fund – we go beyond investment. And since we partner with the magical Going to School, we often inspire their art teams to solve our entrepreneurs’ marketing challenges. For us, it’s not just about new ideas and enterprises, it is about what it takes to run a small scale problem solving enterprise in a low-income community – your market is different, who you want to reach is different, and the problem you want to solve is different. So, it needs different packaging. It needs bright colours in urban slums and recyclable marketing materials in villages. We’ve been in business for three years and what have we learned? Everyone, no matter how small or big, if you’re an entrepreneur you need to market your product or service. You need to get in touch with the right people at the right time (communication, clarity, being on time) and you have to do it the right way (keep in mind, the right way changes according to where you are).
We know that messages driven by design can go far. It is after all, all about great design. And young people running enterprises in the most challenging environments need great design (don’t we all?). We visited our entrepreneurs, listened to them, mapped their enterprises, and made notes of everything that signifies their products and services. That was the head-start for our designers. Auto-rickshaws, coconuts, flowers, bamboo trees > to create funky trademark designs.
Then we went back to our entrepreneurs to deliver. And their responses are why I’m writing this report. Bhanuprakash, has a small nursery that grows saplings for more than 200 farmers in his village. He manages multiple customers and sellers from different parts of the state. His phone number is a must for all his clients to have. He could not reach out to many of them personally and now that he has a business card, people can call him any time they need. This is what his friend who inspired him for this business said, “Great! You started with me but now you have become a big businessman it seems!”
Poornima, 27, a young entrepreneur, a mother of two, faced difficulty in getting to reach out to more customers telling them about her amazing quality product and prices. He had her husband’s help but it was difficult to be present everywhere across 20 villages physically. We printed some cool flyers for her silk net enterprise. She ran it through local vendors and customers. It is hard for her to believe that she has more customers for silk nets than ever before, more than what she can even handle.
Then there’s Obliraj, our youngest entrepreneur, who weaves and sells silk sarees in Bangalore. He never thought about getting a visiting card or a board for his enterprise. When we asked about his brand name, his response was, “What should I call my enterprise?” We shrugged back “What about your name?” He was delighted and proud, showing his new business card to his father, “It’s Obliraj Silks, dad.”
Yes, marketing is the key to a successful enterprise. Especially if it’s in your name.
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