12. GoCoop: Leveraging Technology to Impact the Lives of the Rural Poor

GoCoop (www.​gocoop.​com) is India’s first online and mobile-based two-sided platform that connects the highly fragmented rural handloom weavers and artisans, who typically function within cooperatives, to urban markets in India and abroad. GoCoop’s mission is to enable sustainable livelihoods for the rural artisans, thus helping to preserve craft traditions in the country, and at the same time ensure the supply of high-quality, authentic handlooms, and handicrafts to customers. The case highlights the innovation at the bottom of the pyramid by which the poor become producers and how technology can be leveraged to achieve social impact at scale. The case offers many lessons for social ventures including development of supply chain and capabilities of beneficiaries and their absorptive capacities, B2B versus B2C business models related to funding and market maturity and the need for a team approach in building new ventures.