The technology revolution has significantly impacted government, business, communication, and the labor market. After the invention of the internet, the e-learning process started in the late 20th century. However, it took time for the whole world to adopt change. The world has now moved towards e-business. Many platforms offer online services. Both clients and businesspeople now prefer to buy products online. Online shopping has replaced the tradition of travelling long distances to reach a shop.
Although it is helpful and more efficient in many aspects, Pakistan is one of the countries where the concept of online shopping was not well established in the early 2000s. People were not familiar with the terms of E-Commerce. At the same time, Rabia Naeem is a student of a Bachelor’s in Business Administration at the University of Karachi. She began to take an interest in this field and started working in it as a small online gift shop owner. Then, by the grace of Almighty Allah, she established a profitable business from scratch in less than two years.
She was a brilliant student, and her academic performance was also outstanding. She was also a skilled writer and artist, with creative thoughts and a penchant for thinking differently and outside the box to discover new opportunities. She had a cheerful and energetic personality from childhood, and she was always ready with different kinds of plans in different situations. She had a passion and skills for composing poetry and writing stories. She also wanted to pursue her career in a field of interest and become a businesswoman. In 2012, while she was in college, she began creating art, writing calligraphy, and posting blogs and articles on her Facebook page. She could use the internet resource to indulge herself in social media, just like other students were doing. She preferred to explore the world through the internet and find resources that could help her build herself and achieve her dreams.
During her university years as a student, she felt the lack of job opportunities for new graduates and some experienced ones, especially in Marketing. She felt that there is a lack of an entrepreneurial mindset among the students, and they are only pursuing jobs but are not creating opportunities for themselves. She felt that there was a lack of use of technology for their benefit. Noticing the world is earning through the internet and exploiting it to the fullest, and we are just using it for communication and entertainment. She approached her friends and family, sharing the idea of earning money online. First, they could not get her point, and later convinced them. At the age of just 21, she created a small, homemade gift studio that would later become successful.
She identified weaknesses, faults, and inconveniences in the regular gift shopping market. There was little to no tradition of online gift shopping and delivery systems for people at a reasonable price.
She realized that, despite being educated, people often struggle to buy online with ease and reliability. They have little to no knowledge that they can also create custom gifts and send them to their loved ones without the hassle of going to the market, arguing with the shopkeeper, and wasting their precious time. This can be done simply by using their laptops, phones, and the internet. They opt for any random gift hampers according to the shopkeeper’s will and at a very high price; therefore, she decided it was the right time to bring the gift shop to the customer’s house. She started this gift hamper-making and delivering business. She received a crushing response, and then she recognized that she could turn it into a business.
She used to have a business partnership with a catering company, which functioned quite well, providing food for special occasions and at schools. She learned a great deal through this experience. Her business and communication skills were honed even more after working in this field, having to interact with a wide variety of individuals.
Here, she learned how vital customer satisfaction is in the industry, and she realized that one has to take responsibility for each. As a customer, you will always say that we are giving you money, so we want everything to be perfect, although not every time is perfect. She earned a handsome amount through this business.
Then she started to go full-time in this business as she specified two guys for delivery, whereas the designing part and customer dealing are done by herself and her mother. She thinks that the biggest hurdle in the growth of her business is the ever-drowning economy of Pakistan, as people find it difficult to buy in these challenging times. However, their prices are still reasonable, so people have no issues with prices, as they are cheaper than the other big brand names. Currently, she is running her business through social media like Facebook and Instagram. She is also considering marketing their business products through Facebook Ads and Instagram paid shoutouts. To go fully global, they are developing their professional website, which could cater to all the customers needs by designing a custom basket of gifts according to their wishes and adding or removing any product that the customer wants or does not want. She stated that they need some investment as they want to expand the business by renting or buying a specific location for their warehouse. It would create more job opportunities for youngsters, especially for creative teams, designers, delivery guys, and website development and maintenance teams.
She says that there has not been much failure or loss in this business by the Grace of Almighty Allah. Sometimes, the customer does not like the final product and claims their money back. They tackle this by giving half the amount back to the customer as a win-win situation, but that does not happen frequently, only very rarely, as she declares that her clients trust her. Suppliers are primarily accessories shops, print shops, and decoration material shops. She also has a trustworthy relationship with her suppliers. There has been a relationship of mutual trust formed, which is honored by both parties(Startup Hampers Factory and the suppliers)
She welcomes the new generation into her business as, in her mind, the new brains bring new ideas, and they can solve problems more efficiently. There can be a gap in business strategies and thinking between the young and the experienced. Still, overall, she feels that a diversified workspace can benefit the business.
She has always been an independent person, and she believed that there should be no business with family. If people have a comfort zone with you, they stop respecting that boundary and sometimes do not obey your orders and take you for granted, and then somehow your work gets affected. Therefore, she is the only founder of the company.
When you capture the consumer market for your product, you know your business’s potential, so you get the idea of whether to rely on an external source for investment or not.
The system operates not only in Pakistan but globally through websites.
It would help if you went parallel with technology and innovations. If you are stuck somewhere, you are out of the world.
Her advice to new entrepreneurs is to be consistent and try to do beta testing. Before launching your company, you should have a clear understanding of the market, your competitors, and the uniqueness of your product that sets you apart.
It may seem easy to start a business, but dedication, time, and effort are required. Once you create awareness and target your audience, you can make a strategy to grow your invention. Training people about the system is the biggest hurdle. The initial challenges she faced were to convince people to adopt this new gift shop and raise awareness of her startup. Previously, before the Covid-19 pandemic, there was limited culture and knowledge of online business, especially in Pakistan, and it remains a challenge to transition the existing market system to an online one.
