Chasing financial independence : Women-led small businesses take wing in Karachi

Grappling with a pandemic and the policies that have come as a consequence of it, have meant that many existing businesses that once flourished in the megacity, have had to go to the wall in the last two years.

However, at the same time, Karachi has seen exponential growth in small and home-scale businesses, started by women and housewives who refused to succumb to the crisis.

One such woman, Farhana*, who belongs to the mixed-income neighbourhood of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, said that she took up the mantle after seeing her husband struggling to provide for their family of five.

“My husband lost his marketing job close to the first wave of Covid-19, and couldn’t find a new job as companies stopped hiring. He started driving a private cab, which also failed to provide for us because of the lockdowns, increased fuel prices, and a huge commission charged the company. I have three children, all of whom go to school; so when the money stopped coming in, I knew I had to do something to make sure that they are not deprived of education,” the housewife narrated.

However, Farhana, who’d been a school teacher before marriage, wasn’t allowed to work outside the house by her in-laws, and neither could she manage that with the responsibility of three children and a household. “I’d design and stitch my daughter’s clothes myself and they would always garner a lot of compliments from her friends and their mothers. I had my own stitching room in my house, so a friend suggested I turn it into a business. I started advertising my business on the neighbourhood women’s WhatsApp group. Most of them were my friends, so they already knew how good I am at stitching and it was wedding season, so I instantly got a few orders,” she told.

In the last one year that Farhana has been running her home-based business, her husband says that it has brought their family a lot of financial ease. “We both still work to make ends meet, but Farhana’s input has taken a lot of burden off of my shoulders. We are not rich, but at least we don’t have to worry about paying our children’s school fees anymore,” said the entrepreneur’s husband.

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Similarly, Amber Kashif, another housewife who was driven to start her own business after being left strapped-for-cash, said that she’d never before thought of turning her passion into an act of commerce. “A payout from a bachat committee (BC) had landed me a sum of Rs25,000. It was all that I had after my husband lost his private job and I knew that I had to invest it somewhere. I loved makeup, and neighbourhood women would come to me for help from time to time. So after a lot of thinking, I used the money to buy all the essential cosmetic products and started a small-scale, neighbourhood-wide beauty service. Cosmetic products range from Rs 150 to Rs1,000, but they can last if used smartly, and I can earn Rs500 to Rs1000 a day from my services,” said the self-taught beautician, who has now expanded her business to retailing makeup products via social media.

For Kashif, this has been an opportunity that not only put her on the path to financial independence but also one that has made her realise the potential of her own talent, which she’s been looking to hone as she further expands her scope of business.

In the same vein, Fareeha Adnan, a student at a local college said that she would see her father working the hardest only to make a meager income, which would make the student embarrassed of asking her parents for money for herself.

“I had saved up a sum of Rs5,000, which I wanted to use to start a small business so that I’d some extra cash for myself and wouldn’t have to ask my parents for more than what they were already investing in me and my education. So I went to the wholesale market with my mother and bought a bunch of artificial jewelry and women’s products that I started selling online. These were inexpensive products that didn’t require much capital but had a huge customer base, so orders didn’t take long to start flowing in and soon my business was up and running,” told the college girl, who’s been able to build a business from scratch with next to no resources.

Other than these three, many other women in the city have also used the opportunity of Covid-19 lockdowns to start their own businesses. Although for some it has been a product of necessity, while for others a conduit to pursue their passion, this period has determined that if given the space and opportunity, women’s participation in business can be the answer to many issues of the struggling financial capital.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17, 2022.