Bridging the Opportunity Divide through Digital Marketplace Literacy Program
NCoRe: Creating a Digitally Enabled Social Knowledge Management Platform for Rural SC Community to Bridge Rural-Urban Knowledge, Information and Market Divide (Funded by Science for Equity, Empowerment & Development (SEED) Division Department of Science & Technology, Govt of India)
In today’s world, it is becoming a dire necessity for the rural artisans to participate in digital marketplace for survival. The need has become more pronounced during pandemic and post-pandemic scenario, where participating in digital marketplace has become a necessity, both for buyers and sellers. In order to enhance digital marketplace participation of rural craft producers of Birbhum, we have designed a two-tier framework. The first component of this framework focuses on creating a digital Platform called NCoRe, an e-connecting and e-supporting platform to connect rural artisans with consumers and entrepreneur to collaborate and co-create handicraft products.Subsequently, the second component of this framework focuses on imparting digital marketplace literacy training to our target group, enabling them to draw socio-economic benefits using the digital medium.
The overall Model of Intervention is depicted in figure below:
Each rural artisan holds an individual digital shop in NCoRe, consisting of their profile and photos of their products. The platform’s offering is divided into three segments:
- Firstly, the platform offers the opportunity to urban consumers to co-create handicraft and handloom goods by collaborating with a range of rural producers;
- Secondly, the platform acts as a classic exhibiting site for a range of products created by artisans of Birbhum. The products are displayed in the platform, along with the artistic journeys of their respective creators; and,
- Thirdly, NCoRe offers both rural and urban entities unhindered opportunity to avail for skill upgradation prospects.
- to learn how to use of internet to search product / market related information;
- to learn how to explore e-commerce and related sites in Internet to know the market price of similar products and to know about their competitors in the domain of their work;
- to learn how to explore YouTube and similar channels to get tutorials on new design ideas and get insights on product innovation from online domain experts;
- to learn about how to click attractive photos of their products and make them exhibitable on online selling channels;
- to learn about new online selling channels and how to register and perform business successfully in e-commerce / social media sites;
- to learn about how to use different social networking sites (FB, Instagram) to attain business benefits;
- to learn how to explore Internet to find out sources of finance and related welfare schemes from Govt agencies.
We have also designed a Mobile App in local language to assist the artisans in uploading their personal and artistic details on the NCoRe platform. NCoRe promotes rural artisans and their traditional and indigenous art forms in the global marketplace by providing an organic connection between rural artisans and urban consumers.
The Digital Marketplace Literacy Program has been designed to help the rural artisans:
Evaluation Framework:
One of the objectives of this project is to evaluate the impact of the designed online Digital Marketplace Literacy Program on around 400+ rural craft producers residing in Birbhum and to analyse the factors that determines the success of this program.
