Female-led Home Based Business
The origin of what we know now as "My Cuppa Tea" began with Sibgha Vaqar, who enjoyed arts and crafts as a hobby.
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What started as a single woman soon became a family business when Sibgha started recruiting relatives to increase the family's overall income.
With time, My Cuppa Tea has evolved into a company with more than ten female-only employees. These employees utilize their artistic capabilities to the fullest by creating masterpieces, attracting customers, and fueling the company.
Her business steadily flourished into a well-known platform with currently more than twenty-one thousand followers on Facebook and more than two thousand followers on Instagram.
The company provides a wide variety of hand-crafted products, ranging from home décor to stationery items to calligraphies to customized articles and even wooden furniture. The women of My Cuppa Tea are anything but afraid to go outside the box and experiment, improving their skillset.
Sibgha Vaqar started her journey in late 2016 through Facebook groups, led by women. Such platforms on Facebook have given countless Pakistani women the opportunity and the courage to initiate their business, allowing them to stand on their own two feet.
The women-centric nature of such groups provides a safe space and sense of stability to Pakistani women, who often hesitate to engage in the mostly male-dominated markets.
A wide majority of Pakistani women are bound to their homes and children, unable to engage in businesses.
This is exactly where the online business space has become a major game-changer by providing several women an opportunity to earn, right from the safety of their home!
Just like Sibgha's small business, several other women-led companies have popped up and left their mark in local as well as international spaces.
Quite recently, on the 8th of March this year, the United States Mission to Pakistan, in partnership with Facebook, celebrated International Women's Day 2021. They recognized the achievements of all the Pakistani female entrepreneurs who received #SheMeansBusiness training.
SheMeansBusiness training helps women-oriented businesses all around the globe through social media platforms, boosting their sales and increasing their online presence.
Beth Ann Lim, the Director of Facebook's Asia Pacific Policy Programs and Government Outreach says,
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"Women in Pakistan are extremely talented and have the potential to achieve great success; something we have observed over the years and continue to invest in".
This shows what role social media sites have played and will be playing in empowering Pakistani women and turning all their dreams into a reality.
To become a successful company, one has to build and keep customer loyalty. For this, the company has to build the image of a reliable and trustworthy business.
Maintaining a customer base engaged for a long time is one of the struggles many online businesses face. My Cuppa Tea, for example, seems to be doing amazingly well in this regard, with excellent reviews and a variety of products that keep the old customers coming back.
With this new age of digitization, e-commerce brings tons of new opportunities. But it also comes with a new danger, cybercrime.
Cybercrime is on the rise, with more and more businesses shifting to online platforms. With a new Instagram page blooming every day, customers go through miseries like frauds, phishing, data leaks, etc.
Cybercrime is one of the major reasons why Pakistanis as a whole avoid online shopping as well as online payments.
With COVID-19 taking over and people being locked inside their homes, cybercrime cases peaked in Pakistan and so did the number of online businesses present. Unfortunately, the majority of the victims of such cyber crimes were women.