Lazada Appreciates Women Entrepreneurs Who Make Breakthroughs

In conjunction with World Women’s Day, Lazada held its inaugural Lazada Women Awards. This award is a form of Lazada’s appreciation for six women entrepreneurs in the Southeast Asia region. The award was given because women from six different countries, because they are considered to have passed various challenges in their personal, community, and cultural life.

In addition, they are also considered to have implemented different strategies and applied new ideas when building their online business. Lazada itself divides this award into three categories, namely the Creative Seller Award, the Enterprising Seller Award, and the Inspiring Seller Award.

“These women find interesting and unique ways to utilize the Lazada platform, not only to build an online business, but also as a means of interaction with customers, build community, while encouraging community spirit in the surrounding environment,” said Lazada Group CEO, Chun Li in an official statement, Monday (8/3/2021).

The female entrepreneur from Indonesia who was included in this award was Hanna Suhardi. He was awarded the Inspiring Seller Award category. He received this award because Hanna as the owner of Shopping Shoes is known to have empowered more than 100 tailors in several villages in West Java and Central Java.

This was done by Hanna to fulfill the number of orders in her shop which reached thousands in a month. To find out the winners of the 2021 Lazada Forward Women Awards, here is the complete list:

1. Creative Seller Award is awarded to Anne Ong, Anne’s Secret Recipes’ owner, Singapore and Pham Thi Xuan Hong, PinkShopGiayDep’s owner, Vietnam

2. Enterprising Seller Award is awarded to Georgianna Carlos, the owner of Fetch, Philippines and Lailla Thamnita, the owner of AggieHome, Thailand

3. Inspiring Seller Award: Hanna Suhardi, Shopping Shoes’ owner from Indonesia and Annie Chia, NLWK Florist’s owner, Malaysia

Growth of Women Entrepreneurs on Digital Platforms

Lazada also noted that the steady growth and acceleration of e-commerce in Southeast Asia was followed by an increase in the number of women entrepreneurs turning to digital economy platforms as a new career choice.

There are several factors that make it so, such as the convenience of doing business from home, the low barriers to starting a business, and the ease of registering a shop on a platform like Lazada, including the presence of services to business solutions for them.

On the other hand, a study conducted by Lazada Indonesia (Lazada), part of the Lazada Group, stated that 87 percent of MSMEs in Indonesia have not been digitalized. In addition, more than half (65 percent) of MSMEs in this category mentioned logistics as one of the biggest challenges in developing their businesses.

Meanwhile, 92 percent of the MSMEs that have been digitalized and use the eCommerce platform agree that eCommerce is very helpful for their logistical needs. The study entitled “Accelerating Indonesia’s Digital Economy through eCommerce” was supported by management consultant YCP Solidiance.

Carrying a Mission to Accelerate Economic Progress in Southeast Asia

Lazada’s mission is to accelerate economic progress in Southeast Asia through commerce and technology. The results of this study help us understand what support we can do to encourage businesses

“Especially MSMEs, to transform towards implementing the digital economy through the support of advanced technologies such as holistic logistics solutions, data empowerment, as well as our eCommerce ecosystem,” said Monika Rudijono, Lazada Indonesia’s Chief Marketing Officer.

The current situation has driven changes in consumer behavior and increased sales transactions on digital platforms, including eCommerce. The e-Conomy SEA 2020 report from Google, Temasek, Bain & Company 2020 states, the value of the digital economy in Indonesia in 2020 reached USD 44 billion.

This value, according to the report, is projected to reach USD 124 billion by 2025. In this case, eCommerce plays an important role to support the acceleration of the digital economy.