Stories

Standing tall on thin ice

28 July 2020
ITC News

Enabling entrepreneurs in Azerbaijan to benefit from e-commerce during COVID-19.

How to collect payments online from local and international clients? How to optimize logistics, marketing and presence on the web? These are only a few of the questions that have been on the minds of entrepreneurs the world over during the pandemic.

In the Republic of Azerbaijan, the COVID-19 crisis has instigated a strong and urgent interest from entrepreneurs to balance their stalled offline activities with online export channels. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and trade support institutions have been pointing out an urgent and real need for assistance to enable e-commerce for businesses as a pandemic resilient channel.

Seven webinars covering e-commerce and related issues began in June and continued until the beginning of July. This series of webinars covered critical themes for a successful online business, including e-payments, multi-language for e-commerce, company formation in the EU and US, Amazon account opening in the EU and US, In-App marketing, e-logistics for e-commerce and dropshipping e-commerce. E-commerce expert Dr Mohamed Es Fih conducted these webinars.

"The webinars were useful and will help benefit our business. We will also now set new goals and better understand the requirements for entering the international market," entrepreneur Leyla Isgandarova said after attending a webinar.

The International Trade Centre, through the Eastern Partnership: Ready to Trade, - an EU4Business initiative, organized these webinars together with AzExport. Aykhan Gadashov, Manager AzExport, talking about the initiative said, "The latest online sessions have been as successful and productive as the other trainings we conducted together during the last three years. Participants wish this continues."

Ready to Trade helps small and medium-sized enterprises from Eastern Partnership countries to integrate into global value chains and access new markets with a focus on the EU, by assisting SMEs in producing value-added goods following international and EU market requirements, while connecting them with buyers from global value chains and markets. This project is funded by the European Union.