Small and medium ventures unlocking digital potential

Anjana Aryal never thought her hobby could make her an independent businesswoman one day. What she started as a time pass on video sharing platform has today become a brand ‘Ghar Ko Swaad’, her Achar (pickle) brand, thanks to TikTok.

Had there not been TikTok, she could have been either engaged in her family business or have never known her potential. But TikTok gave her a chance to explore herself and emerge as an independent businesswoman. Today, she employs around two dozen women in her business.

Aryal is also helping empower women, and many women have now become the breadwinners for their families.  TikTok, the digital media platform, has made this possible.

Apart from Aryal, who has 608,000 followers, and posts every day, mixing content about her pickles with videos of her dancing, shopping and talking, we find similar stories of Renu Shrestha, Ishama Khatri and Sujata Neupane, who also took advantage of the video sharing platform to reach out to their clients and expand their businesses.

Like them, thousands of small and medium businesses (SMBs) have found a new platform, and that’s also for free, to unlock their potential. Especially, the small businesswomen, who have limited capital, have benefitted the most, as they can reach out to their potential clients through TikTok.

The digital platform provides such small business beginners, and owners too, with an opportunity to tap into what content their target audiences want to see, without spending money on advertising. Small businesses cannot afford to advertise on the traditional media platform.

If small businesses create engaging content consistently, TikTok algorithm displays them to more and more people, helping expand their reach and grow the businesses.

TikTok offers free public profiles that give businesses, especially small and medium ones, access to exclusive performance insights, creative tools and account features to help them think like marketers and act like creators.

TikTok is, no doubt, one of the fastest-growing platforms of current time. If anyone is still not using TikTok for business, they are missing out on potential brand awareness, revenue and engagement.

Currently, TikTok is being used by most Nepalis to lip-sync or dance to their favourite and/or trending songs. While trending songs can help SMBs immediately attract the attention of their clients, they should also be unique and authentic, apart from matching their businesses.

TikTok also helps increase brand awareness. It offers multiple ways to spread the word and get attention to one’s brand.

While using trending songs or dances can help easily promote one’s products, at the same time it also does not feel like marketing. That’s why, the best thing about TikTok marketing is that it doesn't feel like marketing at all. It not only helps grow SMB’s audience but also attracts new customers.

Why TikTok is an attractive marketing platform for businesses that want to reach a large audience is its reach. 

TikTok, the famous video-sharing app, made its international debut in September 2016. Owned by ByteDance, a tech company headquartered in Beijing, China, TikTok has 1 billion active monthly users in 141 countries. TikTok has accomplished this in just over four years whereas it took 10 years for Facebook and Instagram to reach that level.

Thus, growing with TikTok is phenomenal. TikTok also took Nepal by storm. Like Aryal, lots of SMBs, especially women-led SMBs, were found using the platform to help grow their reach and of course, businesses, before the Nepal government banned the video-sharing platform in November 13, 2023, claiming that it disturbed social harmony. But now, the ban is lifted. 

TikTok was launched in Nepal in August 2018 by ByteDance. It had emerged as the third most-used platform in Nepal after YouTube and Facebook. By the time TikTok was banned, over 2.2 million of the almost 30 million population in Nepal actively used it. 

But after the Nepal government imposed a ban on its use, the telecom sector regulator, Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA), directed Nepali internet service providers to block TikTok inside Nepal. However, the ban hit SMB owners, marketers and small entrepreneurs as TikTok had already become a handy tool for them to reach out to their large audience.

TikTok, as any other social media platform, needs to be used to grow businesses, though there is always room for mischievous elements, who misuse it. 

Finally, the Nepal government lifted the ban on TikTok in August 2024 after TikTok reached an agreement with the government to help identify misuse of the app in real time and catch cybercrimes. The platform has also upgraded its guidelines, safety features, and content moderation process to make it less vulnerable.

A United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) report estimates that Nepal’s MSMEs employ more than 2.7 million people. 

According to data, there are more than 923,000 registered businesses in Nepal. And 90 per cent of them are MSMEs, accounting for 45 per cent of all jobs. About 12 per cent are small and medium businesses (SMBs), accounting for 40 per cent of employment.

However, the economic slowdown after the COVID-19 pandemic and the political instability in the country have made Nepali SMBs more vulnerable. They have neither been able to expand their business nor create more jobs.

Not only that SMBs contribute some 22 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), besides generating employment for 1.8 million people, especially women, making them invaluable to their empowerment; they also add to an inclusive and broad-based economy.

According to a report of the National Census 2022, mobile phone access has reached 73.2 per cent in Nepal. The report states that some 73.2 per cent of Nepalis carry mobile phones.

Likewise, there were 15.40 million internet users in Nepal by January 2024. Nepal's internet penetration rate stands at 49.6 per cent of the total population at the beginning of 2024. With the increasing number of mobile phones and internet users, digital platforms like TikTok can help reach out to the larger masses.

Similarly, SMBs are the backbone for a small economy like Nepal. Thus, leveraging TikTok’s unique features to increase brand visibility, connect with the audience and creatively showcase products and services, these struggling SMBs can expand their business, as TikTok has also committed to empowering SMBs worldwide by providing them with the tools and resources needed to thrive in the digital era.

(The author is associated with advertising business.)