Leveraging Social Media and Digital Platform for Women-Led Micro and Small Enterprises: Evidence from Bangladeshi Digital Entrepreneurs

Micro and small startups are often viewed as vulnerable due to factors like limited funding, skills, resources, and ineffective marketing and planning. The small-sized firms also hinder their ability to adapt to market changes. This vulnerability is often heightened in women-led micro and small enterprises, especially those from South Asian ethnic backgrounds, which face additional cross-sectional disadvantages. However, digital entrepreneurship offers new opportunities for agile women-led MSEs. Despite these benefits, digital platforms pose unique challenges that are not well-covered in current research. Many women from South Asian backgrounds enter entrepreneurship primarily through social media and informal social capital, sometimes unaware of the full range of emerging opportunities and threats. This paper highlights insights from 10 Bangladeshi female entrepreneurs to explore current and future opportunities and challenges, providing implications for digital entrepreneurs and managers of MSEs.