This report highlights the lessons learnt from establishing an online E-commerce site and training online marketers (E-marketers) to promote sales of products made by rural women cooperatives and NGOs by utilizing online promotion and customer service methodologies that were researched under this project.

It has been observed that rural women cooperatives and NGOs that producing indigenous products are at present working in isolation within a market that is restricted to their local area. Their limitation in promoting the sales of products has often been exploited by middlemen. Internet E-commerce, however, holds a promising future for such enterprises that can utilize it to market and sell their products on the local as well as global market.

Towards this end the project established an online E-commerce site and explored the possibilities through various research methodologies to identify and adopt cost-effective strategies and software to train online marketers (E-marketers) to promote sales and offer online customer service for products made by rural women cooperatives and NGOs.

The objectives of the project were to explore the possibilities of promoting sales of products made by rural women co-operatives and NGOs in rural areas through e-commerce by utilizing E-marketers; to explore the possibilities of E-marketers promoting the indigenous products online by offering them with 24 hours online Internet access, without paying hourly telephone bills, using wireless routers; and to research and utilize innovative online customer service methodologies for the E-commerce site.

The activities undertaken by the project team included short-listing women cooperatives and NGOs producing indigenous products, collecting information on products manufactured by them, orienting the short-listed organizations on e-commerce, designing & hosting the e-commerce store, setting up Internet access and related infrastructure, researching online promotion and customer relations strategies, training the e-marketers in online promotion and customer relations, monitoring and evaluating the performance of the e-commerce store as well as e-marketers.

Based on the methodologies outlined in this report and the annexure we have trained the E-marketers in online promotion and customer service for products made by the women cooperatives and NGOs.

The India Shop E-commerce store is online at http://www.xlweb.com/indiashop/

During the past 6 months that the E-marketers have been actively promoting India Shop there have been an average of 1000 visitors to the site every month and the women cooperatives and NGOs have earned a profit of approximately Rs 75,000 through sales of their products on the online store. This is a good start and the E-commerce site will continue to be promoted even after the project duration.

We are happy to inform that the project has been demonstrated and accepted by Council for Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART), a division of the Government of India, who have evinced interest in up-scaling the project to benefit women cooperatives and rural industries from other parts of India.

RESEARCH PROBLEM

It has been observed by FOOD’s researchers that rural women cooperatives and NGOs that are producing indigenous products are at present working in isolation within a market that is restricted to their local area. Their limitation in promoting the sales of products has often been exploited by middlemen. Internet E-commerce, however, holds a promising future for such small enterprises that can utilize it to market and sell their products on the local as well as global market.

In order to explore the possibilities of leveraging E-commerce for a non-profit cause, FOOD established an experimental Internet E-commerce web site for sales of products made by rural artisans and women co-operatives. Running a live E-commerce web site has enabled us to experiment with the various components that go into an E-commerce store like designing of site, incorporation of secure technologies for shopping, credit card authorization, delivery of products, supplies etc.

From the above experiences we found that the success of an E-commerce site largely depends on securing the trust of users who are more comfortable with the “offline” shopping experience.

It was felt that adopting a new approach in promoting E-commerce for a non-profit cause would help market products made by rural women cooperatives and NGOs. The research would be primarily in two segments of E-commerce namely online marketing and customer relations.

With the above factors in mind, FOOD has initiated research through this project to create a networking environment that facilitates co-operatives and NGOs in rural and remote areas to come under one umbrella to market their products globally without middlemen.

Through this project, we explored the possibilities of deploying E-marketers to promote products made by women cooperatives and NGOs. An E-marketer is an online marketing agent (or a virtual salesman) that mobilizes online traffic and draws in customers to the E-commerce store. For E-commerce promotion to be effective, the E-marketer will provide not only publicity for the website but also offer online customer service to the users of the E-commerce store. Each E-marketer will be attached to one particular product segment that will be featured on the E-commerce store.

For E-marketers to market products online they should have uninterrupted, cheap access to the Internet. In India Internet access is relatively cheap, but the phone bills that one incurs in connecting to the Internet are exorbitant, often five times more than the access cost the user pays to the ISP!

For providing the Internet facilities to the E-marketers we should have a higher speed permanent up link to the Internet gateway. Towards this end FOOD will explore the possibilities of utilizing high-speed wireless routers to connect telecenters from where the E-marketers will go about their day-to-day promotion activities to FOOD’s Internet gateway. This will provide the E-marketers 24 hours Internet access without having to pay hourly telephone bills. We proposed to use high-speed 1.5 MBPS point-to-multi-point microwave technology to provide Internet access at the 10 telecentres established by FOOD that are located within 12 km radius of FOOD’s office.

The E-marketers project is by design a non-commercial undertaking and the core of the project is to analyze whether E-commerce can be a viable proposition for small and micro-sized enterprises in rural areas in developing countries, and not just for large-sized companies in urban areas.

Since the target group of this project, that is the small and micro-sized enterprises, cannot bear the cost of developing an E-commerce store, at present FOOD has to initiate efforts to create an E-commerce web site and enable it with facilities like shopping cart, credit card processing etc.

It must be noted that as a result of this project employment will be provided to the disadvantaged and indigenous craftsmen who are working in the rural co-operatives in addition to providing employment for the educated unemployed youth who function as E-marketers.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Methodology

The methodology adopted for this project was as follows.

· Short-listing women co-operatives and NGOs, orientation program for short-listed producers, collecting information on products to be offered on the E-commerce store (Dec 4^th 2000 to Feb 10^th 2001)

FOOD’s research team visited and identified several women co-operatives and NGOs from 4 districts in Tamilnadu whose products will be featured on the E-commerce store. We collected details on the products like product name, description, price, height and weight from the producers. The team also explained the concept of E-commerce and the objectives of this project to the potential beneficiaries. The artisans and entrepreneurs were very receptive to this project and expressed their willingness to cooperate with us in successfully launching the E-commerce store.

The team collected details on more than 1000 products produced by the women cooperatives and NGOs including products like Kancheepuram sarees, wooden handicrafts, wooden wall hangings, jute wall hangings, jute bags, copper products, paintings, curios made out of sea shells, paper mesh toys etc

· Designing and hosting India Shop (Feb 12^th 2001 to Feb 28^th 2001)

Based on the product details collected our team designed an E-commerce store with a shopping cart interfaced to a credit card merchant account provider for the purpose of online credit card validation and payments. The E-commerce store was hosted online on FOOD’s Internet server at http://xlweb.com/indiashop/

· Access provision - wireless routers for high speed Internet access (Mar 1^st 2001 to Mar 16^th 2001)

For the purpose of Internet access provision we utilized Wireless Internet Service Provision System (http://www.mikrotik.com/3index.html) that is an integrated system for wirelessly connecting users to the Internet within a range of about 12km. The WISP data-links connected a wireless Internet router at FOOD’s office and 10 telecenters established by us to provide Internet access for the E-marketers to work from not only FOOD’s office but also from any of these telecenters. Benefits of the WISP system are that it offers high-speed data link and cost effective solution for prolonged use by multiple users for reliable 24-hour Internet access. During the course of this project, DSL Internet access became widely available and since the cost of DSL access was cheap we provided this access via DSL lines also for the E-marketers who were telecommuting.

We also equipped our office with Internet access kiosks as well as office automation facilities like DTP, photocopying etc which would enable E-marketers to telecommute and function as online marketers for the E-commerce store.

· Researching online promotion and customer relations strategies for the E-commerce site (Mar 19^th 2001 to Apr 27^th 2001)

One of the first tasks of FOOD’s research team was to go online and shop at the many e-commerce stores that were already online. By shopping online FOOD’s researchers got a feel for what works and what does not, from the customer's point of view. Also FOOD’s researchers gained valuable insight that helped to design a marketing strategy for the India Shop. The good (and bad) design methodologies used by these online stores was observed in order to serve as a guideline while implementing the India Shop online store.

Our team involved itself in researching various techniques and technologies for online marketing and customer relations by extracting the best practices from various other websites including how the E-marketers can effectively use e-mail to promote the E-commerce shop, optimizing the E-commerce site design, search engine promotion, maintaining communications with potential and current customers, efficient product deliveries etc. A guideline document was prepared based on our research that was provided to the E-marketers to assist them in their marketing and customer service efforts. This document is enclosed as Annexure 1.

§ Training for the e-marketers (May 1^st 2001 to May 31^st 2001)

We provided training to the E-marketers on online marketing and customer service for the E-commerce web site. The training followed a hands-on approach wherein the E-marketers were given computers and asked to login to the Internet and use several of the search engines and websites available to enable them to get familiar with web browsing, using search engines, designing web pages etc. Our team guided and assisted the E-marketers in their learning process. Each E-marketer was provided an e-mail account and space on FOOD’s server to enable them to store their work files, email communications etc.

· E-commerce site goes live (June 4^th 2001 onwards)

On completion of the training program each E-marketer was attached to a particular product segment on the India Shop E-commerce store. The E-marketers were provided online Internet access including computer time. The E-marketers started off by experimenting with the skills they had learnt and within few months many of them were successfully promoting sales of products entrusted to them. The E-marketers are being paid a commission for mobilizing sales for the products featured on the E-commerce store.

§ Monitoring and refinement of strategies (ongoing)

We held regular meetings with the E-marketers and the producers to enable us to analyze the direction of the marketing and sales efforts. This process allowed us to collect feedback from the producers on whether they saw any improvement in their financial status through sales made from the online shop, whether they were now receiving wider publicity for their activities by being a part of an umbrella E-commerce network and so on. The meetings also allowed us to analyze the practical problems faced by the E-marketers and exchange ideas and success or failure stories in the strategies being adopted by them for online marketing. Suggestions made by the producers and the E-marketers were incorporated into the overall strategy for India Shop.

Main research findings

Survey of users who visited or bought products from India Shop

A survey conducted by us of users who have visited and/or bought products from the India Shop site provided us with the following findings. Users were sent an email survey that was completed and e-mailed back to our research team. The findings of our survey was useful to us in evaluating our strategies.

1. Overall, how satisfied are you with our website? (mark as 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 with 1 being extremely satisfied and 5 being very dissatisfied)

Results:

1	2	3	4	5
8%	15%	60%	15%	2%

2. What aspect of the site could we enhance, to most improve your level of satisfaction.

Results:

Suggestions given by the users included improving the shopping cart on the website, providing free shipping or reducing shipping costs, enhancing the graphics design of the site, providing 24 hours online live support, etc. Based on the feedback from the users many of the suggestions have been implemented on the India Shop site.

3. Please rate the importance of the following characteristics when using our E-commerce website (with 1 being extremely important and 4 being insignificant)

Results:

· Ease of navigation

1	2	3	4
76%	15%	8%	0%

· Product ordering

1	2	3	4
65%	27%	6%	2%

· Product pricing

1	2	3	4
57%	34%	7%	2%

· Product quality

1	2	3	4
45%	37%	11%	7%

· Product selection

1	2	3	4
8%	24%	67%	1%

· Product shipping

1	2	3	4
62%	18%	15%	5%

· Customer service

1	2	3	4
87%	12%	1%	0%

4. Compared to your other online shopping experiences, how would you rate our website on each of the following: (with 1 being much better and 5 being much worse)

Results:

· Ease of navigation

1	2	3	4	5
6%	12%	52%	11%	19%

· Product ordering

1	2	3	4	5
8%	47%	35%	10%	0%

· Product pricing

1	2	3	4	5
6%	7%	39%	45%	3%

· Product quality

1	2	3	4	5
25%	5%	67%	2%	1%

· Product selection

1	2	3	4	5
10%	60%	15%	5%	10%

· Product shipping

1	2	3	4	5
3%	5%	40%	30%	22%

· Customer service

1	2	3	4	5
42%	23%	30%	5%	0%

5. After using our website how do you rate your level of satisfaction with the following: (with 1 being extremely satisfied and 4 being very unsatisfied)

Results:

· Convenience

1	2	3	4
14%	47%	26%	13%

· Customer service

1	2	3	4
62%	28%	7%	3%

· Ease of navigation

1	2	3	4
13%	35%	32%	20%

· Site graphics

1	2	3	4
0%	56%	40%	4%

· Site usefulness

1	2	3	4
5%	20%	72%	3%

· Value for the price

1	2	3	4
7%	35%	32%	26%

6. Would you recommend our website to others?

Results:

*Absolutely*	*Most likely*	*Unlikely*	*Absolutely not*
26%	64%	7%	3%

7. What are the most important reasons for you to shop online?

Results:

Easy to place an order	54%
Cheaper prices	32%
Faster service and delivery	7%
Easy payment procedures	4%
Large selection of products	3%

Credit card merchant account providers

After completion of the design of an E-commerce site the next major decision to make was how to accept payments online on the Internet.

We researched into the methods available for accepting payments on the Internet. It was observed that online payments could be accepted via e-checks, electronic funds transfer and credit cards or by maintaining an account with private companies like PayPal. It was noticed that many of these methods like PayPal or e-checks are feasible only for organizations in the USA or Canada since they require the merchant to maintain a checking account in North America. Further electronic funds transfer is too expensive in terms of processing fees that a bank charges, making it feasible only when there are huge amounts of money to be transacted.

There are various credit card merchant account providers that exist in the USA, Canada as well as elsewhere that offer online credit card payment gateway services wherein the online store can accept payments from major credit cards like MasterCard, Visa and American Express. Further during the course of research we also noticed that some banks in India have also started offering payment gateway services for online stores.

A summary of the various credit card merchant account providers short-listed by us are provided in the following table.

2checkout

CCNOW

HDFC

Bank

Internet

Secure

Vantage

Services

Setup fee

US $49

No setup fee

US $1600

US $495

US $185

Deposit

No deposit

US $1100

No deposit

Monthly fee

No monthly

US $160

US $35

US $75

Transaction fee

US $0.45

Nil

US $1.10

US $1.50

US $0.75

Credit card processing fee

5.5%

10%

3.85%

Payment schedule

Every 15 days

Every 30 days

Every 3 days

Every 30 days

Every 15 days

Country of origin

USA

India

Canada

USA

The setup of credit card integration into the online store involves complying with the merchant account provider’s terms and conditions as well as linking the shopping cart of the e-commerce site to the validation system of the merchant account provider.

As and when orders are placed online the merchant account provider would intimate FOOD about the order details. FOOD staff would then process the order by contacting the NGO or group that was producing the items that were ordered, pack these items and then send them off to the customer via courier. Once the products are dispatched FOOD would be required to go to an administration area on the merchant account provider’s server and then tag the order as “shipped”.

The merchant account providers mail a cheque for the total amount accumulated from FOOD’s online store every 15 to 30 days depending on the payment schedule noted in the above table. The cheque would typically take one week to arrive at FOOD office from where the amounts are dispatched to the respective producers after the e-marketer commissions are paid.

We initially utilized the services of Vantage Services for credit card merchant account services. However in the course of running the online store it was noticed that Vantage Services’ policy towards “charge backs” (when the customer purchases a product and later refuses to accept the order and asks for a refund it is called a “charge back”) was to not only refund the customer’s money back but also to charge a hefty “charge back” fee from FOOD for the transaction.

We then signed up with CCNOW merchant account provider in order to experiment whether their services would be feasible for the non-profit online store. CCNOW does not charge any setup or monthly fees, however they charge a higher percentage (10%) on each credit card order that is validated through their system on the online store. FOOD did not have any problems with the CCNOW system except that for payments took nearly 45 days to reach since CCNOW’s payment schedule was only once every 30 days and it took another week to ten days for the mailed cheque to reach FOOD’s office.

We finally signed up with 2Checkout for merchant account services. 2Checkout charges a one time setup fee of US $49 and a per transaction fee of US $0.45 and a sales commission of 5.5%. The payments from 2checkout are sent to FOOD every 15 days by priority mail and hence payments are received by FOOD within 3 weeks of the order being shipped. FOOD’s researchers will continue to monitor and evaluate the various credit card services on offer to determine the pros and cons of each service.

The issue of “charge backs” must be examined and a policy arrived at by any organization that wishes to sell its products online. Charge backs occur when the buyer refuses to honor the purchase and opts instead to get the order cancelled through their credit card provider. We found that sometimes the buyer opts for a charge back because their credit card was illegally used by someone else to purchase products and at times they opt to return the product back and claim a charge back for personal reasons best known to them.

Different merchant account providers have different policies with respect to charge backs and care must be taken to ensure that one understands this policy well before signing up with a credit card merchant account provider. In many cases there is no standardized method that exists in order to resolve a customer dispute or charge back, and often the motto being “customer is always right”. FOOD, during the course of this project, experienced issues wherein a customer would order a product and it would be shipped to them but they would refuse to accept the package from the courier and demand for a refund. For a non-profit online store the cost of production and shipping cannot be written off in such cases since many of the products are made to order items and the producer would loose the money she spent in making those items. Since e-commerce is still in a startup phase worldwide there are no international laws that have been put in place to protect the customer or the merchant in case of disputes arising out of online transactions.

Monitoring site statistics

An important part of E-marketing is to monitor the site statistics – i.e. where are the site visitors coming from, what sort of information are they looking for, how often does a visitor visit the site, how do visitors find your site, etc. Monitoring the site statistics allows the E-commerce store to know the products that are in demand, whether online and offline promotion strategies are working, whether the content on the site is useful enough for visitors to keep coming back and so on.

We started out with a simple counter on the India Shop page to monitor the number of hits to the site. It was soon obvious that measuring the number of hits was not very useful since we could only observe that visitors were coming to the site. FOOD then installed a server-based web log file analyzer program called Analog that provided some more details of the kind of visitors coming to the site and where they were coming from.

In the course of exploring better options for measuring site statistics we came up on a free service offered by Web Trends called Web Trends Live that enabled us to measure a variety of statistics with regard to the India Shop site. The Web Trends Live statistics program can be installed on any site by adding a button on the page that you would like to monitor. The Web Trends Live program works in the background whenever that page is loaded and stores information about each visit to the page. Based on the information collected the Web Trends Live program prepares aggregated reports on various aspects like total pages views, unique visitors to the site, new visitors, returning visitors, most viewed pages, countries from the visitors are coming to the site, the web browser’s default language, the ISPs that are routing the visitors to the site, the search engines that are referring the visitors, the keywords used by visitors to arrive at the site etc. All these reports are available on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

The average monthly statistics collected from the India Shop site is provided below.

Statistic	Value			Remarks
Monthly page views	8,310			There are more than 8,000 page views on an average every month
Monthly unique visitors	1,320			More than 1000 new visitors come to the site every month
Average page view per visitor	5.4			On an average each visitor viewed 5 pages before leaving the site
Average visit length	4 minutes 23 seconds			On an average each visitor spends about 4 minutes on the site
Top 10 referring domains	http://xlweb.com http://search.yahoo.com http://www.google.com http://directory.google.com http://search.msn.com http://in.lycosasia.com http://search.123india.com http://aolsearch.aol.com http://search.netscape.com http://www.dinamdinam.com			These are the top 10 sites on the Internet from where visitors were coming to the India Shop. It is observed that visitors are arriving from the link to India Shop on FOOD’s home page at xlweb.com as well as from Yahoo, Google, MSN, Lycos Asia and similar search engines.
Web browsers used	Internet Explorer – 82.74% Netscape – 13% Others – 4.25%			Most visitors use the Internet Explorer browser
Top 5 languages used by visitors	English – 93.70% German – 1.36% French – 1.11% Japanese – 0.85% Korean – 0.51%			Most visitors use English language, however German and French language browsers are also significant and their numbers may increase if multi-lingual versions of the site are offered
Top 10 visitor countries	United States – 82.91% Australia – 3.1% Canada – 2.52% Singapore – 2.06% United Kingdom – 1.95% Malaysia – 1.26% Japan – 0.80% South Africa – 0.57% Switzerland – 0.57% New Zealand – 0.46%			Most visitors come from the USA, however potential exists for India Shop products in other countries like Australia, Canada, Singapore, UK and Malaysia as well. Future promotion efforts could target these specific countries also.
Top 5 visitor time zones		GMT+0800 : 10.89% GMT+1000 : 10.51% GMT+0200 : 8.56% GMT-0500 : 8.56% GMT-0400 : 7.98%	The 24/7 nature of the online store is demonstrated here. The need to have E-marketers online throughout the day is emphasized since the time zone of visitors coming to the site is varied.
Most requested pages		/ /kanchi/ /blouses/blouses.htm /embroider/ /silkdhoties/ /ddress/ /jute/ /blouses/blouses2.htm /shawls/shawls.htm	The most requested page is the India Shop home page itself, followed by the “Kancheepuram sarees” section, the “Blouses” section, the “Embroidered sarees” section, etc.
Top entry pages		/ /jobs.htm /embroider/ /blouses/blouse.htm /kanchi/ /links.htm /jewellery/ /prodreq.htm /sculpture/ /silkdhoties/	Most visitors come directly to the home page of the India Shop. Some of them come to the “Job opportunities” page where we offer e-marketer job opportunities and then explore the site. Others come in directly to various product categories like Kanchipuram sarees, blouses, jewellery etc. Some visitors also come to the site after landing on the “Links” page where FOOD has provided some screensavers and other freebies.
Search engines that refer visitors		Yahoo – 72.11% Microsoft Network – 9.79% Google – 9.50% AOL NetFind – 3.86% Dogpile – 0.89% AltaVista – 0.59% GoTo – 0.59% Excite – 0.59% HotBot – 0.59% IWon – 0.30% Metacrawler – 0.30% Netscape – 0.30% FindWhat – 0.30% Dmoz – 0.30%	Most visitors come to India Shop after being referred from Yahoo. Visitors also find their way from MSN, Google, AOL NetFind, Dogpile etc.
Search phrases used by visitors		Sarees – 16.91% Saree – 15.43% Dhoti – 10.09% Shawls – 3.26% Indian saree – 2.67% Saree shops – 2.37% India shop – 1.78% India shopping – 1.48% India sarees – 1.48% Indiashop – 1.48%	Most visitors to the India Shop site use the search keyword “saree” to get to the site. This means that the promotion of the site on the keyword “saree” has been very effective. Future site promotion and product offerings should leverage on this advantage as well as aim to promote other products on offer.

Packaging and shipping

The most important aspect of running of an online store is of course the fulfillment of orders when products are ordered. We evolved a process for fulfillment of orders that starts the moment the order is confirmed by the credit card merchant provider. This process is outlined below:

§ Confirmation received from the credit card merchant account provider stating that an order has been placed and the credit card of the user has been validated.

§ E-mail is sent to the customer thanking them for the order and informing them of the details of the order as well as the address to which the order will be shipped. The customer is asked to reconfirm by e-mail whether the order is correct and that they would like the order to be shipped to the address indicated.

§ Once the customer reconfirms the order by e-mail, FOOD’s order fulfillment department looks at the various items ordered and sends a note to the respective producers to deliver those items to FOOD.

§ Once the items of an order are delivered at FOOD these are checked for quality and correctness and then packaged.

§ The package is then dispatched to the customer via FedEx courier.

§ E-mail is sent to the customer informing them of the order dispatch and thanking them for an order. A link is provided in this e-mail for the customer to sign up for a newsletter sent out by FOOD that notifies them of new product additions to the online store, new freebies in the “Links” section and also of activities of the non-profits that form a part of the India Shop. This allows FOOD to keep in touch with the customer on an on-going basis.

§ FOOD’s order fulfillment department staff then goes to the credit card merchant account provider’s web site admin area and tags the order as shipped.

It must be noted that the calculation of shipping costs for each product is an aspect that will have to be carefully thought of before products are added to the online store. Many online stores offer free shipping worldwide or at least in the country of their origin. FOOD initially charged a flat rate shipping cost for each order regardless of the number of products or the weight of products ordered. However it was noticed that when the order had more products the actual shipping costs started exceeding the costs collected from the customer. FOOD now employs a system wherein it sets a variable shipping cost for each product based on its weight. Even though this may increase the cost of the products ordered most customers do not seem to mind this extra cost as long as its specifically mentioned as shipping cost and not the cost of the product itself.

E-marketing and customer service strategies

Several factors contribute in the making of a successful E-marketer - some of them being fluency in English, good communication and negotiating skills, relentless (but polite) follow up with prospects, technical skills in search engine promotion and so on. The e-marketing and customer service strategies researched by us and adopted by the E-marketers is outlined in the Guidelines for E-marketers document (Annexure 1).

Sustainability

While we provided training and Internet access free to the trainees this was a one-time contribution to the online marketers. Subsequent renewal of the Internet account was charged by FOOD. Those E-marketers that continued to utilize FOOD’s Internet access are paying Rs 5 per hour of Internet access time and this brought in additional revenue to FOOD. Some E-marketers opted to connect via DSL Internet access that is available now at the rate of Rs 1000 per month.

The E-marketers are paid a commission ranging from 2% to 5% of sales by the women cooperatives and NGOs. This helps them to find sustenance within the project and motivates them to further expand their client base.

It must be noted that during the past 6 months that the E-marketers have been actively promoting the India Shop, the women co-operatives and NGOs earned a profit of approximately Rs 75,000 from online sales. These co-operatives and NGOs were earlier selling their products to the middlemen for a low price and by adopting this online marketing strategy they have eliminated such middlemen and realized much better profits out of their sales.

We are in the process of up-scaling this project to cover rural entrepreneurs from other parts of the state and the country by partnering with CAPART (a division of the Government of India).

FULFILLMENT OF OBJECTIVES

One of the primary objectives of this project was to explore the possibilities of promoting sales of products made by rural women co-operatives and NGOs in rural areas utilizing E-marketers. Utilizing the techniques researched in this project this objective has been fulfilled and a good start has been made to boosting the income of the cooperatives and NGOs whose products are featured on India Shop. As stated elsewhere the producers have earned a profit of Rs 75,000 over the past 6 months. We will continue to run the India Shop even after the completion of the project duration and we are hopeful that the E-marketers and the producers will earn a sustained income from the E-commerce site.

The E-commerce site serves to not only promote sales of products made by the artisans but also to promote their craft and their activities worldwide. Our plans for the future include posting detailed profiles of each craftsman along with video clippings of them at work to enable shoppers to get first hand information on the crafts and the artisans that they are supporting by shopping on the India Shop.

The secondary objective of the project of providing online 24 hours Internet access to the E-marketers without having to pay hourly telephone bills has also been achieved using the wireless routers to start with and later using DSL Internet access. As mentioned earlier the DSL Internet access service has become popular and widely available here during the past 8 months. The cost of access is around Rs 1000 per month and this has been tested and found to be reliable by us. Some of the E-marketers are using the DSL service by pooling their resources and sharing the DSL line with other E-marketers.

The objective of researching and utilizing online marketing and customer service methodologies for the India Shop has also been achieved. As observed from the survey sent out to users of the India Shop site, more than 60% of the respondents indicated that they were extremely satisfied with the customer service experience from the India Shop. The personalized approach and follow up by the E-marketers has resulted in some of the buyers coming back to purchase more products from the India Shop.

Our original plan of providing real time chat turned out to be not so effective since many of the users of the site were from the USA and due to the time difference our E-marketers were not available to answer live chat queries (it would be midnight by the time users in the USA started visiting the India Shop!). One solution that we are now exploring for this is to enroll E-marketers from other countries so that when the E-marketers in India sleep, their counterparts in the USA could answer online chat requests! We have had some enquiries from aspiring E-marketers in Europe and the USA, many of who are quick to realize the benefits and the opportunities that E-marketing provides.

Some of the e-mail received by our E-marketers is enclosed below.

----- Original Message -----

From: <SIVAPD@aol.com>

To: <indiashop@xlweb.com>

Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 12:44 AM

Subject: Receipt of saree

Hello! Per your request I am acknowledging receipt of a saree that I recently
ordered (order 40-1364). It looks great! Thanks. J. L. Darbhamulla

----- Original Message -----

From: TANYARU@aol.com

To: raymond@xlweb.com

Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2001 9:12 AM

Subject: Re: Your order# 11-6127

Thank you so much for your prompt delivery am extremely pleased and will shop
with you again soon. You are wonderful my order arrived on Aug 12, 2001.
Thank u much Tanyaru

----- Original Message -----

From: <SabrinaHarket@aol.com>

To: <indiashop@xlweb.com>

Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 11:37 AM

Subject: Re: Order #40-3010

Please don't send the rest of the items, if you recall I told you that I
cancelled my order due to lack of funds and told you that I will reorder at a
later time, which I never did! At this time I cannot afford this order like
I informed you of, the merchendise has been returned to the sender, and
please refund my money!

Thank You,
CCNilsson.

----- Original Message -----

From: "Bill Kranz" <bkranz@softswitch.com>

To: kannan@xlweb.com

Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 7:42 PM

Subject: RE: Order Number 22- 7131

I received the package. Thanks for your time and patience!

Bill Kranz

----- Original Message -----

From: "gamma" <gamma_raj@yahoo.com>

To: "India Shop" <indiashop@xlweb.com>

Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 9:07 PM

Subject: Re: Sarees

Thanks, these are the three sarees I asked for.
Please make sure that they are dispatched as soon as
possible. I appreciate your concern and effort for
customers. Thanks.

Raj

----- Original Message -----

From: "shiyara siddique" <shiysi@yahoo.com>

To: "India Shop" <indiashop@xlweb.com>

Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2001 8:40 AM

Subject: Re: Saree

Hi!!!

Thank you for the prompt reply. Is it possible for you
to send me some samples to see and decide? Also just
let me know where the indiashop is situated and it's
mailing address please. Note that that I need
a saree that’s rich looking. Thank you very
much on the effort taken on my request.

Thanks,
Shiyara.

----- Original Message -----

From: “Marcello Fadda” <faddamarcello@hotmail.com>

To: <indiashop@xlweb.com>

Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2001 1:55 AM

Subject: Wholesale request

I am the owner of a shop selling quality Indian produce and would be very interested in receiving a price list for wholesale purchases of embroidered sarees.

Marcello

PROJECT OUTPUTS AND DISSEMINATION

As per the proposed methodology the E-commerce shop has been hosted online, online marketing and customer service techniques researched, the E-marketers have been trained and attached to the online shop for promotion of products.

The physical targets achieved are as follows.

Number of women cooperatives and NGOs short-listed	15
Number of products showcased on the India Shop	1173
Number of E-marketers trained	92
Profits realized by the producers from India Shop	Rs 75,000

It must be noted that out of the E-marketers trained, 3 of the E-marketers have been absorbed by FOOD itself as permanent staff in our organization.

We have been demonstrating the India Shop project and the E-marketers concept to several NGOs and Government Departments throughout the project duration. Based on the success of using E-marketers to promote products made by women cooperatives and NGOs, CAPART, a division of the Government of India, has evinced interest in partnering with us for further up-scaling the project to other parts of the state and the country.

Further we are hosting a home page for the project reports at http://xlweb.com/emarketers/. This project site will also be promoted by FOOD as part of its efforts to dissemination information on the research and development activities undertaken by us.

Future plans for the India Shop include posting of detailed profiles of artisans along with video clippings of them at work to enable users of the website to get first hand information on the crafts and the craftsmen that they will be promoting by purchasing from the online shop.

CAPACITY BUILDING

As a result of conducting the research into E-commerce and E-marketing through this project, our research team’s knowledge on the subject has also been upgraded. We are now better equipped to handle deployment of E-commerce websites that will benefit non-profits. Nearly 100 E-marketers were trained through this project on skills ranging from answering e-mail, searching on the Internet, website promotion, customer service etc. Moreover, the women cooperatives and NGOs who are selling their products on the India Shop have been oriented to the benefits of ICTs, specifically on the Internet and E-commerce. As a spin-off of the project we observe that some of the non-profits marketing their products on the India Shop now have their own web pages to disseminate information on their activities worldwide.

SOCIAL IMPACT

The establishment of an E-commerce site and provision of E-marketers has helped a lot of women cooperatives and NGOs to increase their revenue and find a global market.

For example, a women handloom weaver in Kancheepuram (known for its hand-woven silk sarees) spends nearly a month weaving rich silk sarees. She then used to sell this for a meager price to a middleman who visited the village regularly. The middleman sells these sarees to shops in Madras for a much higher price and by the time someone buys the saree from a shop in Madras the cost of the saree would have increased more than ten times the cost that was paid to the women weaver who produced it! When we went visited the women weaver in Kancheepuram and sensitized her on the project, she was very enthusiastic and allowed us to take photographs of the sarees she was making. We posted these details on the India Shop and within about 2 to 3 months we were able to get an order for 2 sarees for the weaver at a very good price. The women weaver was very happy and she is now regularly in touch with us to provide details on the new designs that she is producing.

We also have a group of artisans who are making embroidered sarees in Madras. The art of hand embroidery has been taught and practiced by them for generations but unfortunately the group has not been able to sustain itself due to large companies who are also entering this area with huge investments and automated electronic embroidery systems. When we approached this group they explained to us their plight and that even though they had the expertise they were unable to realize profits from their trade. Many had already left the group and taken up daily wage jobs to find their livelihood. Our team got details of the sarees made by them and these were posted on the India Shop. The E-marketers were successful in finalizing a couple of orders for the embroidered sarees but the real breakthrough came when a buyer in England indicated interest in purchase wholesale purchase of the embroidered sarees. After negotiations we were able to finally get the artisans an order for 75 embroidered sarees from the buyer. We are also following up similar avenues to see if we can get more wholesale orders for the products featured on the India Shop.

Many of the E-marketers trained under this project have found permanent employment as online marketers both with the India Shop project as well as in other companies outside. As mentioned earlier some of the E-marketers have also been absorbed as staff by FOOD. We are sure that the ICT skills learnt by the E-marketers will stand them in good stead wherever they find their employment.

A group of Swedish teachers had visited FOOD in October 2001 on a mission to explore the effects of globalization on non-profits in developing countries. Our team made a presentation on the various projects undertaken by us. When the group learnt about the India Shop, many of them immediately used the computers in our office to logon and visit the site. After viewing the E-commerce site one of the teachers remarked that even the big shops in Madras city did not have an E-commerce web site whereas small entrepreneurs from villages had their products on sale on the India Shop! The group also made a couple of purchases on the India Shop and we assured them that they will be delivered to them by the time they complete their mission and return back home!

OVERALL ASSESSMENT

The objectives of this project were to explore whether E-commerce can be prove to be a source of income for women cooperatives and non-profits working in rural areas. Further we also wanted to see if in the process we could train educated unemployed youth to function as E-marketers to not only promote products online but also find a sustainable source of income for themselves. We feel that with this project we have been able to prove, albeit in a small way, that these objectives are achievable.

Not only have the artisans and non-profits sold their products online but they have also realized the benefits that ICTs hold for them in the future. As a spin-off benefit of this project we noticed that many of the non-profits wanted to post details of their organization profile and activities on their own home pages.

The emphasis of the E-marketers has been on the non-profit nature of the online shop and how it will benefit the craftsmen and non-profits who are producing the products featured on India Shop. Many of the users to the India Shop appreciated the efforts we were taking to promote products made by these women cooperatives and NGOs. We are sure that as more and more people start buying from such non-profit e-commerce shops, people’s participation in charity and non-profit activity will also increase.

E-commerce and online marketing is being practiced in developed countries but with this research project we have been able to refine and adopt these strategies for the benefit of the local community.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

We are hopeful of sustaining the rapid progress that we made during the past year and adding to the list of products that are available in the India Shop. FOOD has partnered with Council for Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART), a division of the Government of India, who have evinced interest in up-scaling the project to benefit women cooperatives and rural industries from other parts of India. We are also demonstrating this project on various platforms to enable more organizations to partner with us in replicating the project in other places.