Empowering the Artisans through Digitalization – Nurturing our heritage on Go Digital With EZAssist

RJ Shantu: Ramadan Mubarak to everyone and Shubho Noboborsho, you’re here with Dhaka FM 90.4, and I’m live on Facebook now along with being on-air. The second episode of Go Digital With EZAssist is here, aired on Thursday, 11AM.

Yesterday it was the Bengali New Year, and Eid is upcoming. These holidays are occasions for us Bangladeshis to do a lot of shopping. But right now, there is a country wide lockdown. We cannot go shopping at this time, but think for a second about the people doing business. They are in a desperate situation right now as all stores have been closed. So aside from the physical stores, imagine if you had an online outlet, a digital outlet, then the business could easily go on, right? Now, to talk about making this process swift and easy, today we’re here with our second episode of Go Digital with EZAssist. To talk about this whole ordeal, I invite on screen Firoze M Zahidur Rahman, CEO and Chief Solutions Architect, Loosely Coupled Technologies. We also have with us Syeda Nawshad Jahan Promee, Chief Operations Officer, Loosely Coupled Technologies, and Mantasha Ahmed, Founder of Deshi Bhalobashi, Board Member of SME Foundation. Welcome everyone, Ramadan Mubarak and Shubho Noboborsho. How are you all today?

Jewel: I’m alright, Shantu. Assalamu Alaikum, Mantasha and Promee.

Promee: Assalamu Alaikum.

Mantasha: Assalamu Alaikum everyone. I’d like to send Ramadan wishes to the viewers on this platform, and a very happy Bengali New Year. 

RJ Shantu: Before we get to our discussion, I’d like to tell the viewers that our show is currently both on-air, you can listen to our discussion on the radio and also see us on Facebook Live, as well as ask any questions you might have directly in the comments below on Facebook Live.

Now, I wanted to start our discussion with a question to Jewel bhaiya, so in this lockdown on one hand the customers aren’t being able to go out and shop for these major holidays coming up, but more than the customers, this is a huge loss for the businessowners. But if they were to keep a digital presence of their business, be on the virtual platform, things would be a lot smoother for them. But when you approach businessowners and tell them that going digital could be an option, you might be often met with incredulity, that maybe going digital is a luxury and not for them, that it is too difficult a process for them to accomplish. In that scenario, what do you have to say to them?

Jewel: That’s a very good question Shantu, now in Bangladeshi context especially, last year we were in the very same situation as we are in right now. From our experience of working with almost five hundred SME’s, I’ve come to the conclusion that most SME owners still think of going digital as an additional channel for selling their products. Their primary selling method remains the physical outlets. But the reality is that we’re shifting our existing business to a digital platform. Previously, people would visit my outlet, but now we have to bring that same customer onto a digital version of our business. It’s not about getting new customers, because for small brands, converting people to buy their products is difficult. Big brands like Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser can get away with making ads and attracting customers. But that’s not the case for SMEs. There’s a lengthy process of building trust before they buy from you. If a customer sees an Aarong ad, they’ll place an order much quicker than they would with an ad from a special boutique. So the first step of action is converting the existing customers of a business to digital. You can’t win without that, as many ads you place, work you put in, at the end of the day people are weary of unknown businesses and your customer acquisition will be very low. But the network of customers that a business already has, returning customers, friends and family, the satisfied customers who at one point went to the shop would go tell others about you. But it’s not possible in this situation to refer someone to a physical store, but if you have a digital shop then your customer could refer people or link them to your business. And this digitization has now become imperative. But if I see that even after a year, a business doesn’t have their digital shop established, the products displayed on a Facebook page or other media, then the customers who would buy the products of this business would no longer want to buy from you anymore. They’d go to a different store to buy similar products, one that has a better digital presence. It’s simply for a lack of access to the product information and ordering process and other factors. They cannot buy from you, because you’re not present digitally.

So primarily, businesses need to protect their existing customer base. And why is this digital channel important? It’s very easy to make a sale at a physical outlet, people can see and feel the products and make a decision there. But data suggests that the online purchase decision is a process that takes even 48 hours at times, people come and see the product images, they ask for information, get a response, then the conversation goes back and forth, so it’s a lengthy process, and without automation, it becomes impossible to handle more than a small number of customers. And if I cannot handle the customers, how would I even make a sale? So whenever we think of online channels, we sometimes think someone else will go through the process and sell our products for us. But, marketplaces like that usually sell Samsung, Aarong, already well established brands that customers recognize and the promotional activities get cut in half. But when a marketplace would try to sell an unknown brand, they would probably just give some benefits like free delivery, but at the end of the day, the business itself has to do the selling. The two strategies are different. Large companies get promoted, but small companies have to go through the trouble of promoting themselves. This is the strategy that even now, after a year of having to go digital, I think most businesses that we work with or even from the perspective of EZAssist, have had a difficult time realizing that. It’s not just about selling online, it’s about transforming your business to retain your existing customers. 

RJ Shantu: So going online benefits both parties. I’d like to go to Mantasha apu now, going digital has become a lifeline now, what do you have to say about that?

Mantasha: The thing is, there is no alternative to going digital. It’s become compulsory now for all kinds of businesses, even those that have operated in physical outlets for years, to go digital. International brands have been operating on the digital platform for years now, long before COVID-19. And there are benefits too of digital platforms, it’s cost efficient, you don’t have to stock so much inventory at a time, and many others. But the concept is still quite new in our country. And for the sellers, to bring them online, you have to think about how to convert your customers also. But one of the advantages for people conducting business on F-commerce is that they already have a huge outreach. They may not have many known clients but they are exposed to a wide group of people.. So I think now is the perfect time for people to go digital.

RJ Shantu: Alright. From here, Promee apu, what do you have to say?

Promee: The thing is, going digital has become a question of survival. And even when people decide to attach themselves to a platform, they stop once they take that initial step. They think that okay, I’m on the platform now, I’ll handle my store and the digital side will go on and somehow keep making sales. But that’s only going halfway. People need to come out of this half-done mindset too. They cannot think of digital as an ornament, it’s just like the physical stores, people need to invest time and effort into running this side of the business just as much as they do with their stores or outlets.

RJ Shantu: What do you think some of the challenges are here?

 Promee: Sometimes when business owners are approached by people personally in making purchases, they don’t refer these customers back to their online platform. They decide to make the sale themselves, often because these platforms have commissions that they cut from sales. But ultimately, this leads to a long term loss. Their online base isn’t built.

Jewel: I’d like to add something here, small businesses tend to be very cost conscious. They try to make more profit through saving these small costs, they don’t want to pay any platforms. But see, in buying a computer or building a website, there are already technological costs incurred. But this platform is making that job much easier for the businesses. Businesses when digitizing, there is a cost incurred, 2 to 3 lacs go into making a stable base. When the platform takes a 10% or a 15% cut off your profits, this same cost is very spread out, and you don’t need IT costs or technical setup costs. So by using a platform, businesses are already saving that cost, but when trying to save even the platform costs, they are failing to establish a strong digital base and thereby limiting their own capacity. A person can maybe work 6 or 8 hours a day to attend customers, then they also have to attend to other aspects of the business. With this limitation, their sales would never go up past a certain limit. Or maybe they’re sick on a certain day, then no sales would be made at all on that day. But if business owners refer the customers to the platform, perhaps at first it can be difficult to get used to, but slowly even the consumers would get used to it and make purchases. If they’re satisfied, they would refer others too. Referring to physical stores is actually quite difficult, people have to explain where it’s located. But online referrals can be done with just a set message, or a link, and it’s done. Customers can visit and see the products uploaded. But product updates in itself is a challenge for businesses, Promee and Mantasha apa can probably elaborate on that much better.

RJ Shantu: Exactly, I was just about to ask Mantasha apa, from the merchant’s point of view if you could explain some of these challenges?

Mantasha: First of all, for people not very familiar with digital platforms, it posed a great challenge. We’ve been working with EZAssist for a while, and when we started it was a time when everyone was quite desperate. Products were racking up, no sales could be made during last year’s Pohela Boishakh and Eid, and especially for the fashion industry, more than 60% of our inventory caters to Boishakh and Eid. It’s a huge market. But when we couldn’t do that last year, we were desperate to try to get some of the inventory out through online platforms. I think in that sense we survived. But then when lockdown eased up again, businesses went back to focusing on their physical outlets a lot more, and updating the products on the digital platform went to the backburner. And another point I’d like to mention is that it’d be good if the websites were a bit more user friendly. We’ve had many workshops with SME owners, the Deshi Bhalobashi team and EZAssist, but the business owners of our country, some in rural areas, this concept isn’t very clear to them. Website promotion is a different thing, already a lot of people are doing online businesses, like mothers and middle aged women entrepreneurs who aren’t very tech savvy. But they usually have people around them like their children or friends and neighbors who help. We have to also take into consideration how we can bring the next generation onto the platforms. We have to focus on empowering the women entrepreneurs as much as possible. And I would like to thank our Honorable Prime Minister for her valiant success in building up a Digital Bangladesh. 

Jewel: I want to add something here, as much as we try we cannot really teach everyone in Bangladesh the use of technology, so we have to develop the technology itself to a point where we wouldn’t need to teach people. There are more than 8 million SME’s in Bangladesh, and no matter how many workshops you host it’s just not possible to cover these many people. So technology needs to develop here taking the context of the people of Bangladesh into account, forget about what’s happening in the international market, we have to look at how people of Bangladesh think, how their user pattern is. We have to reinvent the wheel, develop technology seeing how the people here will use it. Technology has to progress aligning with how people of our country are capable of using it. This is one of the major areas of improvement from our side that we need to focus on. And unless and until we can solve it, it’s very difficult to convert this 8 million base to digital platforms.

Promee: Let me just add something here, of course technology has to be user friendly, but the people using it also need to play a part here. A challenge from our end that I’ve noticed is, as an example, a customer placed an order for a notebook on Deshi Bhalobashi, it’s provided by a certain merchant but we cannot get in contact with this merchant. We can’t find out information if the product is available, on its location, the merchant is out of touch, his phone is turned off. It has happened before that we had to get in touch with Mantasha apa to find the whereabouts of a merchant. I think these merchants themselves need to be fully involved in the process too, 

And another challenge that merchants face often is regarding some online promotional activities, for example, to attract customers to purchase their products online, maybe they’ll give an online-only discount. Sometimes merchants want to increase the price then give a discount on that, but I always say that you have to be transparent with your customers. If the physical stores have a certain price fixed then the discount has to be on that.

So these are some challenges I’ve encountered when dealing with the merchants.

RJ Shantu: On this note, in the last episode we spoke about how people convert to digital shopping when there is an incentive. And when people make a purchase, they learn the procedure, and then they come back. Isn’t that so, Jewel bhai?

Jewel: It reminds me a bit of dolphin training, incentivizing the dolphins with food on one side of the hoop to make them jump through. With customers, you incentivize them to make the initial jump onto digital purchases, and they learn from it. 

When customers first try out online shopping, they will buy things in small amounts, or buy from renowned brands. To make them buy from a small brand like yours, there needs to be some incentive. Buying from physical stores is more expensive because shops have rent and other overhead costs that get added to the price, but online the pricing is lower. The businesses are incentivizing customers to make purchases online, do it at a lower cost and on the customer’s own time. Here businesses are actively pricing the physical and the digital differently to incentivize the same customers from physical stores to go digital. And business owners cannot be half-hearted about this. Because half-hearted commitment implies that there is still room for doubt that digital is the way to go in this situation. You cannot get half-married, you have to commit and be fully married, and here business owners or merchants are marrying the digital. 

RJ Shantu: Alright, giving discounts digitally is similar to giving rewards to customers for going through this process of digitalization. On that note, the Bibiana merchant of the week discount of 50% is still ongoing. All you have to do to avail it is go to their Facebook page and send them a text, and you can buy sarees, kamiz, or any clothes you like from Bibiana for 50% off. 

We’re going for a small break now, don’t go anywhere, we’ll be right back. And in the meantime, let’s take a look at EZAssist and how you can use it for your digital shopping purposes.

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RJ Shantu: We’re back with Go Digital with EZAssist, episodes airing every Thursday at 11am.

Mantasha apu, I’m sure you face a lot of issues when uploading proper information about all your products on the digital platform. Taking pictures, sorting through them, uploading and cataloging. Especially with Eid coming up and the ongoing lockdown, how are you facing them?

Mantasha: We work with a lot of entrepreneurs, Deshi Bhalobashi is a platform for artisans and creators of Bangladesh working with products that highlight our culture and heritage. It’s not enough for just me to be digitally advanced, since I have to coordinate with everyone else. When we were starting out, just taking a proper picture of the product was a challenge. The pictures that the entrepreneurs would send to us would be unusable. We actually had to give them photography training separately. But the entrepreneurs with us have all been putting in an effort to go digital, and I would say they have developed their skills a lot this past year. But as said before, F-commerce in Bangladesh is actually developing quite a lot. We help a lot of our entrepreneurs with establishing their Facebook pages. And especially during the pandemic, I think there has been a rise of female entrepreneurs starting businesses through F-commerce. But establishing websites is still uncommon, barely seen in Bangladesh. If you look at the big brands operating in Bangladesh, like Zaara, in other countries the use of websites, customers going directly to a brand’s website and making purchases, it’s all very well developed there and you can easily find out what inventory they have, the products in stock, etc. You don’t see that in Bangladesh. Somehow people here are far more comfortable with Facebook, they know how to operate it and know how to buy and sell on it. I think companies like EZAssist or other web marketers have a lot of awareness to build here on the benefits of building their own websites. Even with Deshi Bhalobashi, we’re having to direct people to our website from the Facebook page, we have to incentivize them with discounts to try it out. And of course it’s very easy for merchants to come on Facebook, open a page, post some pictures and prices and get started with their business. But websites, or a proper selling platform, has many advantages that they’re not aware of. Jewel bhai, will you elaborate on these benefits and how to encourage the people to buy from websites?

Jewel: As I mentioned before, if a merchant doesn’t get on a website, then they can’t really handle more than a limited number of customers. Websites are self-operating and will always serve the customers 24/7. 

On Facebook, a merchant has to speak one-on-one with a customer and make a sale. When we deal with large brands, we encounter 800 to 1000 or more queries per day. That means it’s not really possible for a person to respond to all these people. But when we shift this to a website, the customers can browse through all the products, the descriptions, whether it’s in stock or in the right size, and then make a purchase. 

People cannot go to stores to make purchases in this lockdown, though that was the easiest method. And if you don’t use your Facebook page to start redirecting your customers to your website, then it’s not possible to build up their habit of making website purchases. In Bangladesh, the most traffic can be generated through Facebook, rather than Google or other sites, because people spend more time on Facebook here than any other website. 

So we have to make the shift from Facebook to web shops, but why? Because that’s more manageable and handleable, and when receiving an order from the website, the merchant knows about it, processes it, hands it over to the delivery company, so it’s an entire digitalization process. From my personal experience over the last few years working with SMEs, I think that unless and until the businesses decide to shift to websites and redirect their customers to it, there will not be any paradigm shift here.

Because when we personally respond to customers on Facebook businesses, we cannot handle more than 20 or 50 customers, and when we can’t respond to others, they’ll be annoyed, and we won’t have our products sorted, and it all becomes a vicious cycle where either I stay small, or even become smaller as a business. And if I make higher than usual sales on one day, I’ll be happy but the very next day if I’m too busy with something then I won’t make any sales at all that day. But we have to run a business like a proper business. Website is where you have online payment mechanisms, delivery company integration, and it’s far more manageable constantly. For this reason we have to start integrating our websites along with the Facebook pages. They’re not two separate entities, the Facebook page becomes the recruitment point of our website, bringing people to the website from Facebook and conducting the business there. 

Even when a business owner is present at the physical store, they want the salesperson to handle the customers. Similarly, when the business owner encounters a customer on Facebook, why can’t he or she do the same and send the customer to the website, which will manage the sale? Your job is to create the product, make it cheap, package it well and send it off, but you have a website to conduct the sales. And it’s understandable that every business right now is under a lot of pressure, not much revenue is coming in, so the owners might want to handle a sale by themselves, but this is harming the business in the long term and preventing growth. They might even give a discount after stating a marked up price, but then nothing is operating right. The business is trying, but since the fundamentals aren’t in place, nothing is going right.

The communication is pretty simple, you send the website link to people you know and your customer base, and if your products are updated, the pictures look good, you will make a sale, there doesn’t need to be too much branding. If it’s a clothing business then the pictures of the products, the descriptions will speak for themselves. But you do have to keep the website updated, and then just send the link to people, either through SMS, the Facebook page, to people you know and the existing customer base. These SMEs have an existing client base of 150 to 300 customers already, all they have to do is direct them to the right channels and sales will happen, they don’t have to boost posts or do a lot of promotions. People will buy. But sending a regular text with the link, the offers, or redirecting customers from Facebook queries, that needs to be consistently done.

RJ Shantu: I further think that brands like Deshi Bhalobashi, the outlets are closed now but I can easily go on the website and make purchases whenever I want. A lot of people are very loyal customers and would only buy from that specific store or brand, so I think that’s a huge advantage that comes with establishing a website too, because even though the physical outlets of the store I like are closed, I can go online and buy from them, specifically. 

Promee apu do you want to add something?

Promee: So what I wanted to add was that anyone can conduct business on Facebook, but the sales will for sure be limited. This one time I asked a page whether a certain item was available and it took almost 24 hours for them to get back to me, and then too they told me that this branch doesn’t have it but that I could call the Uttara branch to find out. But if they had a website, I could go check it, I know what I want too but I had to wait for almost two days just to figure out where I could buy it from, just for the information. So if you have a business on Facebook, your growth will be limited, you will lose sales and your business won’t be conducted smoothly.

Jewel: There is a simple math here, the average basket size for fashion industry purchases in Bangladesh is about 2000BDT. Now assuming you have a large margin, maybe you make a profit of 50%, then that’s 1000 taka that you keep. To be able to afford a good lifestyle in Dhaka, you’ll need about 100,000 to 150,000 a month, and that is around 150 sales that you need to make. And for that you need to sell 7 to 8 products a day, more or less. And considering a standard conversion rate of 10%, you need to interact with at least 70 people a day to make 7 sales, and for a person to do that is very difficult. But if you have a website set up then all you really need to do is give the link to people, and they can find everything on it and make purchases. So if I, as a merchant, set up my website properly then I won’t just make 150 sales, I’ll make 200, 500, or more. It’s just about directing people to my website. Increasing the sales volume is very easy, if the merchant is offering good products at a good price, but it’s just not possible through one on one interaction or messaging people. 

And most of us keep this hope that we’ll automatically get to a better position tomorrow. This month I made 50k sales, then it must be 70k the next month, and so on. But there is a maximum limit to this interaction, in the end my personal profit won’t go over 25 or 30 thousand, and my total sales won’t cross 1 lac or a certain number. But to establish a proper income source, that 1 or 1.5 lac that a merchant needs, there is no way to achieve that until they shift to a proper website. But with a proper website and platform established, basically the sky’s the limit to how much your business can grow. Because technology is the same either for Amazon or for any other business. So a microbusiness will remain a microbusiness unless it chooses to take the steps to migrate to a small business, or a small business to a medium sized one. Whenever I convert to digital, that potential expands, so the right mindset needs to be pushed. If the business owner or merchant chooses so, then it will happen. 

RJ Shantu: Mantasha apu, I think you want to say something?

Mantasha: Yes. I think for microbusinesses, ones that are too small with just a few product offerings, for them a website is not a feasible option. The few queries they might get, they can handle themselves, or maybe hire a manager for that. So for businesses on that micro scale, platforms like Deshi Bhalobashi bring together a lot of these merchants and give them a structured platform to sell their products, and Deshi Bhalobashi has a proper website that is feasible. And I have hope that during this pandemic we can bring together even more entrepreneurs to our platform, we’re already speaking with a few small businesses and groups trying to get them on our platform. Deshi Bhalobashi gives the microbusinesses and entrepreneurs a platform to sell their products and at the same time makes it easier for customers to find a variety of local entrepreneurs and artisans in one place, on our website. And I think we have to put an effort into making websites easier for customers to use when making a purchase, and also for merchants to operate when updating their products and relevant information. I think that would make the website transformation much smoother. 

And some other benefits of websites is that if you make an account or a purchase once on a website, your information is stored and you don’t have to go through the hassle multiple times for future orders. Again, websites give automatic updates on where your product is, what stage of delivery is ongoing, while on Facebook you might have to ask and wait for a response to get that information.

For cash on delivery you might need to stay home, or tell someone that you have a parcel coming and they need to pay this amount, it’s all a hassle. Or you can also bKash the amount. So that can be done through a website and it all just makes the process a lot smoother for all parties involved.

RJ Shantu: We’re nearing the end of the episode, so I’ll read out some texts or comments we received from viewers. Nazia Rahman said, “Deshi Bhalobashi is simply an inspiring platform and my favorite, proud of you, dear Mantasha.” Zabin Hossain said, “Thank you EZAssist team for such a wonderful platform.” Many viewers are saying best of luck to the EZAssist team. 

So in the last episode we got to hear some interesting stories or experiences that you might have from running this process, EZAssist with Deshi Bhalobashi, let’s start with Jewel bhai.

Jewel: An interesting story from when we started out with Deshi Bhalobashi, so customers usually after placing an order want it delivered immediately, they don’t want to wait at all. With Deshi Bhalobashi, it connects entrepreneurs, merchants from all areas of Bangladesh, very remote areas too. The product needs to be sourced from these few remote areas, brought over and then delivered to another location.

There was one order, a customer wanted the product delivered to Chittagong within the afternoon of the next day. But the product was sourced from North Bengal, and Mantasha apa called and was stressed out about what to do, and our delivery partner, C-Logistics were informed, and I think Mantasha apa can tell this story better.

Mantasha: The delivery was very important, they have been with us for a long time. The order was for a lot of fish, they were going to distribute it. The entrepreneur who makes these is from Shirajganj, and the entire time he told us that he will be able to process the full quantity but then just 2 hours before it was going to be picked up, he let us know that it’s just not possible to get it done. So that became a huge crisis for us.

When we were starting out with the website, Jewel bhai was teaching me how to operate it as well. It seemed a bit complicated to me honestly, and this one time I was telling one of our rural entrepreneurs that she needs to update her products on the website, and it might be a bit complicated at first but once she gets the hang of it, it becomes easy. And she asked, “Apa is this more difficult than having a baby?” I said, “No, of course not,” and she replied, “I gave birth to a couple of kids so I think I can handle it.” I thought that was a good attitude to have from a woman, a mother. She has given birth, so nothing is too difficult for her to conquer. 

RJ Shantu: Great stories. We are almost at the end of ourtime, it’s just not possible to talk about everything in this short time and unfortunately we have to end our episode soon. Mantasha apu, if you’d please give a short message to our audience and viewers?

Mantasha: I’d like to let the viewers and audience know that Deshi Bhalobashi is an online platform that connects entrepreneurs from all over the country and brings them together to showcase their products in one place on our website. Our aim is to bring the beautiful products of our country, our culture and heritage, on this platform to highlight them and support the entrepreneurs and artisans creating them. I’d like to ask all the viewers and audience to support the local and rural entrepreneurs through purchasing their products, especially at a difficult time like this during the pandemic. Eid is coming up soon, and I hope positive things will happen. Just hopefully not COVID positive, but positive times ahead. I’d like to thank Dhaka FM and the viewers for being here, and I’d like to thank EZAssist for taking the initiative to bring micro and small businesses to a digital platform, to help them grow. Technological companies need to continue stepping up and caring for the people of our country like this, so I hope more people are inspired by this.

RJ Shantu: Jewel bhai?

Jewel: I think the real inspiration here is Mantasha apa, as someone already commented. Bringing these microbusinesses and remote entrepreneurs, artisans together, I think that there is no point in thinking that something is impossible and then not doing anything about it. Mantasha apa is so inspiring in what she does, her sheer determination in getting things done, the way she is uncompromising about getting issues settled anyhow, I think this is very inspiring when working with Mantasha apa. And she does so much, at all hours of the day, sometimes I see her working at 4am in the morning, inquiring about how to get something done, dealing with all challenges that arise anytime. 

And EZAssist is learning so much from working with all these SMEs, I think if everyone can develop this uncompromising determination that Mantasha apa has, this digitalization process will run smoothly and we will soon have an entirely transformed small business sector. We will be able to write our own history, when people like Mantasha apa take the initiative to drive such change, things are bound to move in a positive direction. At least I am very hopeful about that.

RJ Shantu: Promee apa?

Promee: Thank you Mantasha apa, I remember just how fast she was able to get things running, taking charge. If other SMEs step up like she did, I think the process will move along swiftly and develop very soon, which is going to be great for us all.

RJ Shantu: Thank you so much everyone for tuning in with us and joining the Facebook live. During these trying times, please stay home as much as you can and stay safe. As Mantasha apa said, it’s important to come to the support of the domestic artisans, stand by them, if you make purchases, visit these websites and purchase their products.

We often say that why would I buy things for myself when there are people starving in the country, but these products that you’re buying from platforms like Deshi Bhalobashi, they are sending a huge chunk of the proceeds back to the remote artisans who worked in the making of the product, and that happens to be the only earning source for them sometimes. So please make conscious and learned purchase decisions, and support the people of our own country. We are all in a very vulnerable situation right now with the pandemic, so again, please stay home and stay safe, keep tuning in with us at Dhaka FM 90.4. Adios!

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