“Visa plans to connect local merchants with 13 mn+ audiences with Bring India Home”

Visa has initiated the ‘Bring India Home’ drive, a platform intended to support small businesses by encouraging Indians to consider the positive impact that their conscious shopping choices can have on local communities. The platform brings together Indian artisans from all parts of the country, creating handicrafts, goods, apparel; and several such products thereby providing fair and equal opportunity business to all.

Visa will facilitate assistance for SMEs and local brands with Digital Payments, Digital Marketing, Chatbots and Technical assistance. Furthermore, Visa cardholders will get exciting offers and discounts on 200+ brands and 5,000+ products. The Bring India Home website will create awareness among the buyers pan-India, provide an array of ethnic, very Indian products and help consumers extend a hand to artisans to get their businesses back on their feet.

Speaking to Adgully for the column Talking Insights, Sujatha V. Kumar, Head – Marketing, India and South Asia, Visa, speaks about the various issues faced by artisans and Visa’s mission in empowering them for greater digital and financial inclusion, as well as the positive impact that conscious shopping choices can have on local communities.

What is the brand purpose and objective of the Bring India Home campaign? How is it going to benefit the brand Visa?

The Bring India Home campaign is an initiative by Visa to extend support to small businesses and micro-enterprises across the country. It is a one-stop platform where Indian buyers will be able to explore and shop for local products designed and fabricated by artisans and craftsmen from across the country. Through this program, Visa will amplify and promote local Made-in-India products under various categories and sections, including food, handicrafts, handlooms, art, décor ranging from multiple states, namely Rajasthan, the North-East, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Ladakh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal.

The COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdown has had a detrimental impact on artisans and craftsmen, whose livelihoods largely depend on handicrafts and selling their wares to shoppers at their location. Visa is providing them with an online platform to promote the handiwork of these talented individuals while making a difference in their livelihood. Furthermore, online shopping has witnessed an upsurge during the lockdown while at the same time propelling a new set of consumers, and we believe this is an opportune time to promote and bring to the fore the efforts of these local craftsmen and help them reach a wider audience.

Your mission is to bring in a digital transformation with the artisan community and empower them and be part of the financial inclusion. What’s going to be your strategy and how do you plan to achieve this successfully?

Visa is a network working for everyone. And small businesses, as we know, are one of the worst-hit communities in the pandemic. Last year, we committed to empowering 50 million small businesses to go online and this initiative is in line with that commitment.

In addition to giving them an online avenue to sell their products, we will be providing a wide array of support and backing to these artisans. Apart from training them on the operations of the platform and enabling them to accept digital payments, Visa will educate and instruct them on the effective deployment of digital marketing while assisting them with chatbots and other technical aspects to enhance the shopping experience. Visa cardholders in turn will get exclusive offers to support and shop from these local businesses.

How is this effort going to help the Visa cardholders and member establishments?

Visa cardholders, through the Bring India Home website, will get exclusive discounts while shopping for more than 5,000 products across 200 brands and businesses. This platform provides an ideal opportunity for the buyers to buy directly from the artisans of India through their Visa payment cards while obtaining discounts and supporting local communities. This not just gives visibility to these micro-enterprises, but is also an effective way to reach consumer segments far wider than only those who come visiting their establishments.

Is this initiative part of the CSR initiative of Visa? How will this unique effort be sustained going forward?

This is not a CSR activity, but through this initiative we do intend to empower segments like artisans who were hitherto underserved or unserved by digital payments, by promoting their handicrafts and products through an exclusive online platform. The Bring India Home website will create awareness among the buyers pan-India, provide an array of ethnic, very Indian products and help consumers extend a hand to artisans to get their businesses back on their feet.

What has been the engagement strategy for this new initiative and who is your target audience for the same? Which markets are you targeting for this special initiative?

With Bring India Home, we are engaging with a wide variety of merchant partners from across categories like handloom, food, handicrafts, jewellery, home décor, etc. We help them list the business and its products online, provide a pathway for fulfilling shopping orders and accepting payments digitally. Through our marketing efforts, we are reaching out to audiences who shop from local small businesses, ‘haats’ and exhibitions, as historically we have seen that these audiences are early adopters and more inclined to purchase products from local artisans and craftsmen. At present, we have covered 18 states and intend to get more than 1,000 merchants onboard this platform.

How do you plan to measure the success of this great initiative? Have you designed any metrics to gauge the effectiveness and ROI?

The primary objective of the campaign is to not only give visibility to these micro-enterprisesm but also help them expand their business by effectively reaching out to consumer segments far wider than only those who visit their establishments. Through our data-driven marketing communication, we plan to connect these local merchant partners with 13 million-plus audiences and help them gain new business.

(Edited and additional inputs by Shanta Saikia.)