Karesa Bazaar (Backyard Market)
A mobile app to connect rural women entrepreneurs with socially-conscious customers in an open marketplace. The app allows consumers to access sustainably-produced goods, while expanding economic opportunities for rural enterprises.
Karesa Bazaar is a mobile app to connect small, women-owned enterprises in rural Nepal to urban customers committed to making socially-conscious purchases, creating a cycle of socially responsible economic growth
Karesa Bazaar builds on the already-functioning Green Growth online marketplace (http://greengrowth.life). Added functionalities through the Karesa Bazaar mobile app will benefit both urban consumers and rural women entrepreneurs.
Karesa Bazaar functionalities will allow consumers to:
buy directly from rural entrepreneurs and give feedback on item quality
get to know the producer and the story behind each rural enterprise
virtually visit producers in their villages to follow product creation cycle
track the product’s journey from farm to table
The app will allows small rural entrepreneurs to:
connect to their customers more easily, providing updates on orders.
display other items under development in their kiosks for feedback
connect to resources that help them expand their market (in-app and cross-platform connections) and
improve the quality of their products (i.e. through certification, skills workshops, and other learning opportunities.)
The app will create opportunities for rural entrepreneurs, women in particular, rather than forcing them to compete with mass-produced products from large companies or cheap imports.
Tens of thousands of Nepalis leave their rice terraces and vegetable fields every year and go off in search of employment in the Gulf countries. A largely-agrarian country until a few decades ago, Nepal’s GDP contribution from agriculture has plummeted from 70% to 33%, with devastating consequences on local agriculture, food security and the economy.
The seasonal out-migration of able-bodied males has severely stressed rural villages, with women left behind to take care of the household, including children and the elderly, tend to fields and cattle, and look for economic opportunities to keep the family afloat. According to the 2016 Demographic Health Survey, about 50% of Nepali women are married before the age of 18. Societal expectations, financial struggles, familial responsibilities, lack of training and a dearth of employment opportunities in the villages, also means that less than a quarter of working-age Nepali women have a chance at employment.
Interestingly, however, women have continued to organize in villages all over Nepal — whether to improve water supply in the villages, build toilets, protect natural resources, or to start micro enterprises. We intend to launch the Karesa Bazaar app in this backdrop – so that we can bring women’s cooperatives and makerspaces into the mainstream, creating wider opportunities for women beyond their villages and households.
The target population we hope to reach through Karesa Bazaar is rural women entrepreneurs, who are scattered across the Nepali hinterland.
While Nepali women play such a key role in their villages and communities, society is not organized to support women seeking economic empowerment. Women earn 30% less than Nepali men and the pandemic has been especially hard on women’s enterprises in a variety of ways. Some have had to struggle to access raw materials, others have found it difficult to deliver finished products or reach customers during the government-mandated lockdowns.
Karesa Bazaar will begin to address this by providing opportunities for women entrepreneurs to break into the market using their cell phones, and once there to create an environment for them to be successful.
An integral aspect of the app is its focus on women-owned enterprises (businesses, cooperatives, etc.). Rather than making them compete in the market dominated by large businesses, Karesa Bazaar will focus on using affordable cell phones and expanding wireless networks to level the playing field for products made by rural women entrepreneurs.
In late 2020, I started volunteering with a women’s food cooperative – Saughat Lollipop Industry – in rural Nepal. The coop, started by women in rural Sindhuli, produces hand-made candies with milk sourced from local cows. I raised US$1000 in January 2021 to:
Help expand the market for milk candies beyond Sindhuli
Support the internship of two young apprentices Sabina (18) and Sunita (15)
My team-members are women entrepreneurs, led by Bimala Thapa, the organizer of the candy cooperative. Sabina and Sunita have been learning production skills (processing milk, shaping and wrapping candies, etc.) and understanding markets (local stores, city markets, and online marketplace) since Jan 2021.
The US$300 microgrant from MIT Solv[ED] helped me and my team focus on research. We carried out four activities, including:
Survey of 50 local store-owners who keep food items produced in Sindhuli and neighboring districts
Travel to Hetauda (regional center) to have Saughat’s products certified by the food quality and safety bureau
In-depth interview of Green Growth platform to understand if/how an online platform can be leveraged to support local producers, and
Visit Kathmandu to connect with other entrepreneurs and e-markets
These activities made us realize that the local market would not be enough to sustain the candy cooperative (and similar enterprises). The Karesa Bazar app is the result of this journey (detailed here: https://tarapandey.medium.com/) to connect entrepreneurs from across Nepal to discerning buyers.
- Improving financial and economic opportunities for all (Economic Prosperity)
- Concept: An idea being explored for its feasibility to build a product, service, or business model based on that idea
Karesa Bazaar is a CONCEPT, even though it’s anchor platform GreenGrowth is in GROWTH phase. The idea is to work with GreenGrowth to add Karesa Bazaar as an add-on to the existing platform to provide specific, and value added services to rural women entrepreneurs.
On the supply side (target: rural women entrepreneurs), Karesa Bazaar will work with Saughat Lollipop Industry – namely with the coordinator of the cooperative Bimala Thapa. Our interns Sunita and Sabina – who fit the persona of young women entrepreneurs from rural Nepal with cell phone access – will be involved in all phases of Karesa Bazar’s development. From research to documenting product lifecycle and producer profiles.
On the demand side, we will reach out to already-existing 1500 customers of GreenGrowth platform to deploy the Karesa Bazaar app and roll out versions of the app and its updates.

Team Lead