SHEROES Enters Burgeoning Social Commerce Market With SHECO

Delhi-based women-only social network SHEROES is now expanding its product portfolio with the addition of social commerce product— SHECO. The company is also venturing into fintech with its plans to enable microcredit for women homepreneurs and sellers on SHECO.

Besides being a social commerce network, SHECO will bring credit access to the sellers on its network. The company says that users are leveraging SHECO to gain access to training, support and the tools to become successful entrepreneurs.

Under SHECO, women can source consumer products from SHEROES, and market them within their network and beyond using social media apps. They have access to training and resources and get accredited on their SHEROES profile.

To further support SHECO businesswomen, SHEROES aims to bring microloans via cooperatives and microfinance companies for these women. In the next three years, SHEROES aims to grow to be the largest digital lender of microloans to women entrepreneurs and independent sellers.

The company said that SHEROES users with mobile phones and bank or UPI accounts, who don’t have credit scores but have been actively building their SHEROES profiles, are potential borrowers. They comprise micro-entrepreneurs, home chefs, beauty parlour owners, handicraft makers, resellers and other service providers.

Founded by Sairee Chahal in 2013, SHEROES offers a space where 16 Mn women discuss health, careers, relationships, and share their life stories, achievements and moments. The platform has more than 1000 communities with members participating from different sectors such as homemakers, professionals, gig workers, entrepreneurs, and students.

By 2020, SHEROES aims to become a 100 Mn women network. The network also offers a chat-based counselling helpline, mentorship, recognition, resources, a reproductive health tracker and opportunities for women. SHEROES has made several acquisitions such as Gharkamai, an online platform assisting women to find work from home, health counselling platform LoveDoctor and women health app, Maya.

Till date, SHEROES has received funding of over $2.6 Mn over three rounds, according to secondary research by DataLabs by Inc42, with prominent names such as Lumis Partners, Leo Capita, Vijay Shekhar Sharma and more.

In addition to that in August 2019, it signed a strategic partnership with fintech major Paytm. With this, Paytm added a social community platform for women within the payments app, which enabled women to engage in several topics, including health, careers, hobbies and more.