Karandaaz is inviting innovative solutions to promote women entrepreneurship in Pakistan to reduce gender gap in economic opportunity and growth. The proposed intervention should aim to bring innovation in business opportunities available to women entrepreneurs and develop an e-commerce and business finance platform that will strengthen the quality of economic participation and financial inclusion of women entrepreneurs. In order to reach a large and diverse population of women entrepreneurs through a product that not only supports business growth but is also
commercially viable, the use of a ‘tech platform’ would be vital.
The tech platform should include the following:
An electronic portal to set up shop and access services such as logistics and marketing for the business ventures.
An embedded business finance feature to cover working capital and business growth needs of the ventures including algorithmic credit scoring functionality.
Upskilling opportunities to facilitate businesses in formalizing their business and refining their skills of business management. Should support business analytics, invoicing, API integrations, order fulfilments and documentation management.
Customer support functions for the e-commerce marketplace.
Please note that the ‘tech platform’ will not be a female exclusive platform and must cater to male entrepreneurs as well. However, it should have ambitious yet commercially viable targets for female entrepreneurs. The calculation and strategy for the optimal gender mix is the responsibility of applicant and should clearly be reflected in the technical proposal. The tech platform will cover all aspects of business for the women entrepreneur while ensuring transparency.
Karandaaz Pakistan is inviting local technology company/e-commerce company, financial institution, or any registered company with demonstrated experience in developing an e-commerce platform and has relevance to the SME sector in Pakistan. Given the nature of the project, consortiums are encouraged (particularly of tech provider and FI), each entity must be licensed to provide the assigned service in the project.
Karandaaz will be providing concessional finance (debt and/or risk cover or a combination of the two) for project implementation and piloting/scale-up. The anticipated timeline for the project starting from the selection of the applicant will be a maximum of 3 years.
(i) You can still submit your project proposals even if you have not submitted an EOI.
(ii) The last date for submission of Proposal is 10th January 2023.
(iii) Please read the RFP guidelines before submitting your proposal.
November
December
December
January
January
January
March
Note: These dates are tentative and subject to change.
Applicants must read TORs and RFP Guidelines before applying.
