Setting Up Shop in the Digital Bazaar – Bangladeshi Blue-Collar Service-Providers’ Adoption of a Business Aggregator

Abstract: This essay explores the early experiences of Bangladeshi blue-collar service workers in digitalising their livelihoods. It is a qualitative study that surveys and interviews service-providers in Dhaka who use the business aggregator platform Sheba.xyz, an online service marketplace, and seeks to understand what brought these self-employed micro-entrepreneurs, previously outside the digital economy, to adopt an ICT-enabled solution. The study is guided by Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory, one of the historically dominant paradigms in the field of communication for development (C4D). The overarching research question is, “Why did blue-collar service-providers in Dhaka adopt and use a digital business aggregator platform?” The aim is to explore what motivated/discouraged and enabled/hindered innovation adoption among a group of users previously marginalised from digital and financial inclusion. The findings suggest that adoption of Sheba.xyz among service-providers was not driven so much by a desire to digitalise one’s business per se, and as a means of mitigating a previous inability to do so. Rather, the factors that emerge from the qualitative data are other perceived relative advantages of the solution – of increase in customers, income, and opportunity. Survey respondents and interviewees also displayed strong affiliation with, and trust in, the platform provider; an alertness for fair treatment; and a drive to prosper, suggesting that they embraced a comprehensive concept and altered life situation where belonging, respect, and self-fulfilment matters, rather than narrowly adopted a new mobile application.