Why are women franchisees preferred over men?

With e-commerce giants like Flipkart offering most benefits to its women associates and employees, the trend to retain women workers has grown rapidly. Such moves have surely given a boost to the franchise Industry too, to offer the best to its female franchisees/ partners.

MakeMyTrip is also one of the companies who work towards benefit of female associates. Their Holiday Expert program is designed specifically for stay-at-home women who have prior work- experience and love to travel. MakeMyTrip offers them the opportunity to take up customer queries, help plan and sell a holiday, and earn upto one third of the profits which MakeMyTrip makes on every holiday booking. Yuvaraj Shrivastava, Senior Vice President -HR, MakeMyTrip.com comments: “Our Holiday Expert channel was launched in 2012. It has already grown to a 1000-plus network across Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad.”

Kangaroo Kids Education Limited (KKEL) offers entrepreneurship opportunities to young women in the country in the form of preschool franchises. It offers special discounts to its existing women franchisees who want to open multiple centres within a region. Their preschool business enables women entrepreneurs to maximise the revenue and minimise the risk via multiple KKEL products (KITDR, Day care and Toddler programs). Lina Ashar, Founder, KKEL says: “KKEL's business model ensures that the centre is optimally utilised for the franchisee to derive maximum benefit. This translates into a 12-14 hour operative model, which encompasses school, daycare as well as afterschool activities, all derived and rolled out with the same adherence to innovation and quality that's the hallmark of KKEL.”

Positive ripples

Online player, Saiesta.com offers more power to women with its income generating fashion portal which is supposedly India’s first. The brand envisions having more than 3000 women as members of its Sales Associates Club by end of 2016. Rajat Sikka, Founder, Saiesta.com says: “On an average a women needs to spend just five-seven hours in a week. We already have over 550 women part of the Sales Associates Club. Our website allows a house wife who is not allowed to work to become financially independent to earn anywhere from Rs.2,000 to 30,000 per month.  All she has to do is become a member of Saiesta’s Sales Associate Club and spread the word about the site to her friends and social network. When they shop, she earns a commission. A very simple idea with powerful repercussion.”

With slowly increasing opportunities for women across sectors, the demand for dedicated female partners has also risen. So, this surely is a good sign for equal growth and opportunities in the franchise industry too.