Flipkart creates a spirit of goodwill for the underserved through Daan Utsav
As a leading ecommerce marketplace in India, Flipkart is leveraging its platform to enable its wider community of buyers and sellers to give back to the society for various social causes with the Daan Utsav programme.
Flipkart, India’s leading ecommerce marketplace, is not all about business. The Walmart-owned company believes strongly in giving back to the society. In partnership with GiveIndia, one of the leading donation platforms in the country, Flipkart has launched programmes like Daan Utsav and Giving Tuesday India to offer help to those in need.
Giving Tuesday is a global programme started in 2012 in New York, US, while Daan Utsav was launched in 2009 in India. Both aim to serve the underprivileged.
The Daan Utsav week is being held from October 5 to 10 this year and will highlight the various causes citizens can contribute to from the Flipkart platform. These range from sustainability, women empowerment, equality for the differently-abled, menstrual hygiene, animal welfare, and children empowerment. Through this, every donor will be able to view periodic impact reports that will show them how their donation is being utilised.
In an e-mail interview with YourStory, Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy spoke about the rationale of being part of this programme for the first time. He said this partnership will take its 200 million customers, lakhs of sellers, and employees to the concept of “everyday giving” a notch higher.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
YourStory: What was the driving force behind Flipkart to be part of Daan Utsav?
Kalyan Krishnamurthy: We strongly believe that the success of any business is reflected in its positive impact on the ecosystem. As a homegrown company, we strive to ensure that we contribute meaningfully to the larger community. While creating a positive impact is at the heart of everything we do, a step ahead is to enable our consumers, employees, and seller partners towards conscious giving.
Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy
We believe that doing good is a part of doing well in business, so by partnering with Daan Utsav this year, we are trying to mobilise efforts and work towards contributing to solving pressing issues, including climate change, inequality, poverty and starvation, among others.
While Flipkart has been leveraging its platform for social welfare in every hour of need ranging from calamity relief, disaster rehabilitation, and supporting armed forces, this is the first time we have participated in Daan Utsav to take a proactive and 360-degree view of a variety of social causes and democratise giving.
Between October 5th and 10th, a new cause will be highlighted each day on the platform, and every donor will be able to view periodic impact reports that will show them how their donation is being utilised. This partnership will facilitate outreach to over 200 million Flipkart customers, lakhs of sellers, and Flipkart employees and enable them to contribute to any of the six social causes of their choice.
As the nation gears up to celebrate the festive season, our goal is to ensure that we also create goodwill for the underserved.
YS: How will Flipkart bring its ecosystem together – the company, sellers, and consumers to be part of Daan Utsav?
KK: Coming together of people from across India is a very powerful thing. We want to encourage, motivate, and empower millions of our consumers to give back to the society. Ecommerce has made in-roads to very remote places in India, and we believe our consumers and seller partners from these regions will now have an opportunity to contribute and be a part of the joy of giving, for causes closest to their heart.
While giving in India is an informal activity on an everyday basis, initiatives like this open more avenues for formal giving and encouraging people to become a part of a movement of civic transformation. The youth today is very open to everyday giving. By simplifying everyday giving to them and bringing it to their computer or phone screens, we hope to facilitate their contribution and work toward a thriving and flourishing society.
By making the Flipkart platform available for Daan Utsav, we are also serving as an enabler of giving. The partnership will take the concept of ‘everyday giving’ a notch higher by bringing charity to the fingertips of millions of Flipkart users.
The causes that we’re supporting here range from sustainability, women empowerment, equality for the differently-abled, menstrual hygiene, animal welfare, and children empowerment, supported by various non-profit organisations, including Magic Bus, Goonj, Haritika, Charlie’s Animal Rescue Centre, Uma Educational & Technical Society, and Udayan Care.
YS: Will Flipkart’s engagement with Daan Utsav also help in bridging the digital divide as reaching out to the citizens of Bharat seems one of the focus areas?
KK: In today’s scenario, the internet has become a pervasive and fundamental part of our lives that continues to provide massive economic and social benefits. Despite that, there are millions of people who still don’t have access to it. Although much progress has been made to bridge the digital divide, the challenge remains complex and multipronged. It requires a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach to overcome the barriers to internet inclusion.
At the core of our operations is ensuring that we offer services, products, and features that help narrow down and then eventually eliminate the gap between India and Bharat, and the privileged and underserved, and by the virtue of being an ecommerce platform, our efforts commence at digital inclusion.
YS: Being part of the programme for the first time, how is Flipkart going to sustain this relationship as part of its future roadmap?
KK: We are a socially responsible and purpose driven business, committed to bringing social impact with our line of work. Our employees are motivated to solve for India through tech solutions every single day of their work, and we believe that we will create enough opportunities to contribute towards social upliftment and be a positive force in the community.
We will keep contributing towards creating strong and sustainable communities. The Flipkart group will continue to look at engaging deeply with giving ecosystem and movements such as ‘Daan Utsav’ to spread the joy of giving and leveraging our reach and scale for social impact.
(Edited by Megha Reddy)
