Generating work for women who must stay at home and take care of children can be a challenge.
Targeting Peruvians abroad
Faced with that problem ourselves, my wife, Maria del Carmen Vucetich and I created Tortasperú, an e-business that targets the two million Peruvians living outside Peru who might like to surprise family and friends back home with a home-made cake. Taking advantage of microfinance loans, growing Internet usage, and technical support from RCP and E-connexions, Tortasperú has expanded from Lima-based production and delivery; it now includes a network of housewives who fill orders from Peruvians abroad, which are delivered in seven Peruvian cities.
How it started
The seed of the idea was born in Sweden in 1995. At that time, I was attending a management course. I had unlimited computer connection time, and so I kept in contact with my family by e-mail three times a day, and at night I “surfed the net” (that is, browsed through various Internet sites) to look for business start-up ideas. I had a friend in Kenya and was considering a visit there to gather information. Using a search engine, I typed in “Kenya”. I found a web site for a bakery named Kenya. That was the starting point of Tortasperú.
My wife and I set up a site in which Maria del Carmen could offer her home-made cakes to Peruvians abroad with relatives or friends living in Lima, Peru. In 1996 we set up “Ekeko shop” where we offered home-made cakes to people via Internet for delivery in Lima. This may have been the first site in Peru where a product was offered with the possibility of an order and the delivery service. At that time the word e-business was not yet popular or commonly known in Peru.
The idea was unique, but implementation posed one problem. How would we get the payment? We decided to use a method in which the person giving
the order had to send a cheque to an address in the United States. This was impractical, due to waiting for cheque clearance. We did, however, make sporadic deliveries. The idea and the site was there, just waiting for the right time and the right tools.
Flash forward
In February 2000, I was involved in another Internet project, in which I was a presenter in a virtual seminar to promote tourism to Cusco, Peru. The group organizing this seminar was E-connexions. I noted the credit-card payment system they had in place. This is what was needed for Maria del Carmen’s cakes. I decided to hire this payment system for the cake project.
Expanding the network
A few months later, in April, Maria del Carmen visited her family in her hometown, Cusco. She talked to some of her old classmates about her web site, and realized that other women would like to participate. She expanded the project to cover the whole country. Upon her return to Lima, with the help of Red Científica Peruana as well as E-connexions, we set up Tortasperú. Customers can order a cake from a catalogue and pay using credit cards, sending cheques, money orders or electronic payments to the bank. The order is sent by e-mail to a housewife who is a member of the network in the city where the cake is to be delivered.
The only requisite to be a housewife-member of the project is to be a good baker, be willing to learn to use a computer and work in a timely manner. One might think that these conditions would allow only a small number of Peruvian women to participate — those who already have computers. Fortunately for Tortasperú, Peru has an innovative national network of public computer booths where Internet access is cheaper than phone calls. Created by RCP, Peru’s top Internet service provider, the centres make participating in our network, well...a piece of cake.
Prior to starting, the housewives participate in a course designed to give them knowledge of marketing, cake preparation and the use of Internet tools for e-commerce. Most of the women who participated were uncomfortable the first time they sat in front of a computer. After three hours of instruction, they learned how to use e-mail and how to find the Tortasperú web site. The goal is to show them how simple it is to use these tools, so they can go to a nearby public computer booth, and with the help of the attendant get the information they need.
As orders picked up, we brainstormed about how to inform the customer when the order was delivered. Many ideas were tossed around, but finally we decided to send a photograph of the person receiving the cake. All deliveries are now recorded with a photograph, which is e-mailed to the customer as part of their receipt. This innovation has had a tremendous effect, and many Peruvian customers in foreign countries have sent back e-mails describing the gratifying experience by which they can see their relatives or friends very happily receiving the home-made cake.
We set up a new web site in late May. The largest newspaper in Peru immediately featured an interview with us, followed by a major US newspaper in June. Other magazine articles soon followed.
What have we learned?
- It is possible to set up an e-business covering the whole country, even with a simple product like cakes.
- It is possible for housewives to learn in a very short time how to use the Internet to receive orders.
- Housewives can combine cake baking, childcare and use of the Internet to earn an income without leaving home.
- This era of computer information and computer knowledge is drastically changing our world and the way we do business.
- We, the people from developing countries, have the opportunity to use our imagination and creativity, in order to generate work and income.
- Our model of e-business is easy and fairly inexpensive to implement. It can be replicated in other countries, with other products. One needs only imagination, willingness to work and openness to using technology.
Edwin San Roman, co-owner of Tortasperú can be reached via the Tortasperú web site. Martha Davies of E-connexions contributed to this article. For information about RCP, see the interview in this issue.
