JITA Social Business Bangladesh Ltd.

Generating income opportunities for poor women
2014 SEED Gender Equality Award; UN Women,2014 SEED Gender Equality Award; UNIDO,2014 SEED Gender Equality Award; Hogan Lovells
Green Technologies
Dhaka
Bangladesh

JITA’s business model has been developed to create income opportunities for rural women from low socio-economic backgrounds.The women, called Aparajitas - meaning “women who never accept defeat" -, are recruited to work in door-to-door sales. Their product basket ranges food and sanitary items and household devices, often unavailable in rural communities. 

Aparajitas, the foundation of JITA’s supply-chain, earn income through sales commissions. They obtain the products from JITA hubs, the local distribution businesses developed by JITA, which source from different partner companies. JITA engages marginalised and previously jobless women, thus helping to alleviate them from poverty.

Eco-Inclusive Impacts
Women are empowered by incorporating them into a door-to-door distribution business and provided with sales, accounting and business techniques and career prospects with the company.
  • Creating employment for Aparajitas, whose families also benefit through the increased access to food, medical treatment, and education that can result from an income.
  • Increasing community-level access to a wider range of products like solar lamps and health foods. 
  • Running an awareness campaign to highlight the benefits of environmentally friendly technologies like solar lighting and clean cook stoves.
  • Helping 30,000 households to move from kerosene to solar lamps, thereby reducing carbon emissions. 
  • Aparajitas, who previous to working for JITA had no income, earn approximately USD 30 per month.
  • Providing sustainable incomes for up to 75 staff at JITA’s partner hubs.
  • Providing access to a wide, affordable range of products for rural communities

Partners

JITA Social Business is an innovative rural distribution network, providing jobs and a regular income for women from low socio-economic communities across Bangladesh. Called Aparajitas - meaning “women who never accept defeat" – the women earn commissions selling a range of products from solar lamps to food and sanitary items on a door-to-door basis.

JITA Social Business Bangladesh Ltd. was incorporated as a for-profit social enterprise in 2011. The company was developed from the Rural Sales Programme run by the non-profit organisation CARE Bangladesh from 2005-2011.

Unilever Bangladesh is one of the distribution channel partners of JITA and contributes through a win-win scenario where JITA reaches consumers through its wide networks, while Unilever gets an extended rural market for its products. 

Oxford University works in a three-year partnership with JITA to conduct ongoing consumer impact assessments. The partnership is allowing JITA to create an innovative impact framework as well as an improved product and access strategy.