Having since 2017 supported 23,000 women entrepreneurs and 50 women cooperatives under the Power of Technology to Women Entrepreneurs Programme, and raising women’s rate from 6% to 25% among its business partners, the shopping platform Hepsiburada unabatedly continues its support to women. Joining this time its forces with the International Labour Organization (ILO) Office for Turkey, Innovation for Development (I4D) and the United States Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (USPRM) to support women’s cooperatives, Turkey’s Hepsiburada is poised to launch the Project “Empowering Women’s Cooperatives Through e-Commerce During Pandemic” in cooperation and support of top international agencies.

The project aims first to enhance technical skills of women entrepreneurs through training and mentoring support to 6 women’s cooperatives adversely affected by the pandemic. Then it will engage in the digital transformation of women’s cooperatives to enable them to access digital markets and supply chains, and scale up the number of such cooperatives through an intended social procurement framework.

Women’s cooperatives participating in the project will benefit from commission fee discounts, advertising and marketing, free photographing and shipment support as well as mentoring and e-commerce training. Furthermore, opening new sales channels for women entrepreneurs and supporting production, the project will contribute to the integration of women’s cooperatives into the economy, local development, and sustainable economic growth.

Ms. Ayşe Turunç Kankal, ILO’s Livelihoods Officer, expressed their happiness in being a stakeholder in a project of such objective and scope as follows: “Search for new solutions of sustainability has become all the more important to minimize the impact of economic and social havoc on account of the conventional sales platforms harmed and supply chains disrupted at global scale due to COVID-19 pandemic. Further, such vulnerable groups as women, elderly, persons with disabilities and refugees were hit disproportionately by the disruption caused by the pandemic. The integration of such vulnerable groups, including particularly women’s cooperatives and refugee entrepreneurs into the digital sales platforms is of great importance in these times in terms of sustainability and diversification of sales channels to make such groups more resilient. In that regard, we as ILO are happy to start this project in cooperation with I4D and Hepsiburada.”

Mr. Doğan Çelik, Chairperson of I4D Executive Board said: “We have been working for some time on such issues as the jobs of future, inclusive supply chain management, economic empowerment of women, social entrepreneurship and social procurement in the context of areas for innovative development. We are delighted to see them become commercialized. Particularly as we are talking today more often about poverty graduation strategies, we call upon the private sector to join forces, cooperate, develop together and scale up this collaboration that we are having with ILO and Hepsiburada”, highlighting the intended benefit of the project in his call to the private sector.

Hepsiburada’ Trade Group Chair Mr. Murat Büyümez: “We will mobilize all our means and continue to work to further empower women entrepreneurs.”

Speaking on behalf of Turkey’s Hepsiburada that has unabatedly working to minimize the impact of the challenging pandemic on, and provide support to, women entrepreneurs, Mr. Murat Büyümez, Hepsiburada’s Trade Group Chair noted their excitement for the project “Empowering Women’s Cooperatives Through e-Commerce During Pandemic” in the following statement:
“As a brand that supports women’s presence in all spheres of life, we have since 2017 been providing support to women entrepreneurs on training, marketing and operational processes under our Power of Technology to Women Entrepreneurs Programme. Through many instances of collaboration and investment to outreach more women entrepreneurs in the pandemic times, we have continued to serve as a leverage in the economy. We are much happy to be cooperating with top international agencies for the project “Empowering Women’s Cooperatives Through e-Commerce During Pandemic”; and wish to continue our support to women entrepreneurs in the pandemic times. In the future, we will mobilize all our means and continue to work to further empower women entrepreneurs.”

About Hepsiburada

Founded in 2000 by Ms. Hanzade Doğan with the vision of leading Turkey’s digital transformation, Hepsiburada stands as the only native and national e-commerce company of Turkey. The leading e-commerce platform of Turkey and of the region, Hepsiburada hosts over 250 million visits per month by its over 44 million products in 32 categories to respond in the best manner to the needs of its customers. With its strong logistics network harbouring operation and logistic centres across Turkey, Hepsiburada contributes to the digitalization of commerce in Turkey through its superior technologic infrastructure. www.hepsiburada.com

For information: İpek Yılmaz / ÜNİTE Edelman
ipek.yilmaz@unite.com.tr; www.unite.com.tr