Computers and cakes give confidence and cash to Peruvian housewives

Author : Edwin and Maria del Carmen San Roman
Date added : 2000-08-31

Brief Project Background

Generating work particularly for women is a big problem in developing countries. Providing a second income to the family and take care of the children is a great dilemma for the housewives. Facing that problem, Maria del Carmen Vucetich and her husband Edwin San Roman created Tortasperu, an E-business that targets the over 2 million Peruvian's who live outside Peru and who might like to surprise their family and friends back home with a home-made "torta" or cake. Maria del Carmen's entrepreneurial success mirrors that of a growing number of women. Throughout the developing world. From Peru, Mexico, and India, women whose cultures might impede them from working outside the home are finding it easier to start a business - with the help of microfinance loans and increased Internet usage . By ordering "tortas" through the Tortasperu Web www.tortasperu.com.pe , Pedro in San Francisco or Maria in New Zealand can send a home-made cake to his mom in Cusco, Lima, Arequipa, Trujillo, Ica, Juliaca and Puno. They are prepared and delivered by one of the housewives in the Tortas' network of home bakers. This network of housewives in Peru fill out the orders to bake cakes for their area. Tortasperu is helping women settle a conflict they previously faced between finding a job outside the home or being with their children.

Results

The History

Since 1993 when Edwin first connected to the Internet, he saw the enormous possibilities for communication and information interchange on the Internet. Back in 1995, Edwin was in Sweden studying a course in Management. He kept in contact with his family using e-mail almost 3 times a day and by night Edwin would surfing the net, looking at different sites and getting Ideas. He had a friend in Kenya and was trying to get information thinking of possibility visiting him. Using a search engine, Edwin wrote typed in "Kenya", and one of the sites he found was the web site of a bakery in the United States named Kenya. He decided to surf to that site and found some cakes and other products. That was the starting point of Tortasperu. He formulated the idea to set up a site in which Maria del Carmen could offer her delicious home-made cakes to foreigners who had relatives or friends living in Lima Peru. In 1996 they set up a site "ekeko shop" where they offered home-made cakes to people in the net for delivery in Lima, Peru. "Ekeko Shop" was the first site in Peru, and maybe in Latin America, where a product was offered with the possibility of an order and the delivery service. At that time the word E-bussiness was not yet popular or commonly known in Peru.

The idea was unique, but the practical implementation was a problem. How would they get the payment? They decided to use a method in which the person giving the order had to send a check to a address in The United States. The presented another problem as it was rather cumbersome. It took several days to get a check clearance and then provide for the delivery. Even if unpractical or not ideal, this procedure nevertheless worked and they made some sporadic deliveries. The idea and the site was there, just waiting for the right time and the right tools.

Then in February of 2000, Edwin was involved in another project, where he presented a Virtual seminar about Cusco called: "Virtual trip to Cusco: Land of the Incas". The group organizing this seminar was former members of Quipunet, a Virtual non-profit organization. This group had organized this seminar in order to promote tourism to Cusco, Peru. They had also implemented a pay system using credit Cards in The United States. This pay system was what he needed for Maria del Carmen's Tortas. He decided to hire this pay system for the cake project.

It was also at this time during April 2000, Maria del Carmen was visiting her family in her hometown Cusco. While visiting, she talked to some of her old classmates about her website. She realized that there were many other women who would like to participate. She visualized the enormous opportunity for her and many other housewives in Peru and decided to enhance the project and cover the whole country. On their return to Lima and with the help of Red Cientifica Peruana www.rcp.net.pe ( The pioneer internet provider in Peru and the creator of the cabinas publicas Internet ) and E-connexions www.e-connexions.net in the United States, they set up www.tortasperu.com.pe, where she now offers home-made cakes for delivery in the principal cities of Peru. The customers can order a cake form a catalogue and pay using credit cards, sending checks, money orders or electronic payments to the bank. The order is send by e-mail and depending of the delivery city they contact a housewife-member of the Network to bake and deliver the cake.

The only requisites to be a housewife-member of the project is to be good baker and to be willing to learn and work in a timely manner.

To maintain low prices the company is based mainly on the Internet services, making it necessary for the housewives-member to be familiar with computers and Internet. You would think that these conditions would only allow for a very small economic upper crust of Peruvian women to participate. Fortunately for Tortasperu, Peru has an innovative national network of public computer booths, more than one thousand, where Internet access is cheaper than phone calls. Created by Red Cientifica Peruana (RCP), Peru's top Internet service provider, the 1000 centers with Internet access make participating in the network, well...a piece of cake.

Prior to starting in the Tortas business the housewives in the project have to participate in a course designed to give them the basic knowledge of Marketing, preparation of the cakes and the use of the internet tools for E-commerce. The most important experience from these courses was computer knowledge . Most of the women who participated were afraid the first time they sat in front of a computer but after 3 hours of instruction they learned how to use E-mail; how to find the web site and how to open the e-mail boxes. The goal was to show them how simple it was to use those tools so they could go to a nearby public computer booth, and with the help of the attendant get the information they needed.

A new WEB site was set up as a test the third week of May, and immediately; the largest newspaper in Peru contact them for a interview. This article was published on May 22th and it was a half page interview titled: "Pasteleria atravez de Internet" And then another article was published in The Christian Monitor in the United States on June 13th.

Once they started getting orders, the questions was how to inform the customer when the order was delivered, Many ideas were tossed around, but the best idea came from Edwin: "Lets send a photograph of the person receiving the cake" he said. From that moment on, all the deliveries were recorded with a photograph which was sent by E-mail to the customer as part of their receipt. This innovation had a tremendous effect, and many of the customers have send back many E-mails describing, the gratifying experience by which they can see their mother, friend or relative very happily receiving the home-made cake.

What have we learned?

• That it is possible to set up a e-business covering the whole country even with a simple products as cakes.
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• That is possible for housewives to learn in a very short time how to use Internet to receive orders.
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• That housewives can combine cake baking, caring of the children and using the Internet to earn a income for their family without leaving home.
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• That this era of computer information and computer knowledge is drastically changing our world and the way we do business.
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• That we, the people from developing countries, have the opportunity to use our imagination and creativity, in order to generate work and income.
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• That our model of e-business is easy and rather inexpensive to implement. It can be replicated in other countries, with other products, and others need only imagination, willingness to work and a desire to embrace the computer's technology and/or the Internet.
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Acknowledgement:

We gratefully acknowledge the invaluable support from Red Cientifica Peruana Internet Peru especially José Soriano and E-connexions in Seatlle USA. especially Martha Davies, Alberto Delgado and William McLain with whom we have learned how to work virtually. Last but not least, our thanks to Quipunet ,who gave us the opportunity to meet and exchange our dreams and ideas with Peruvians around the world.

Some E-mails.

The message from my daughter just arrived - she sent it on Tuesday. I am sitting here at the computer in tears because she was so pleased and you have made me so happy. She said you managed exactly what she wanted, even the strawberries. I wish I spoke Spanish so that I could explain how grateful I am.
Muchas, muchas gracias
Deirdre

At 01:49 AM 7/25/00 -0500, you wrote:

Dear Deirdre!

Your daughter was very happy to get the cake. She told us to tell you that she loves you.
You can see a attach photo from her.
Estimada María del Carmen,
No te imaginas la gran alegría de saber -y VER- que han recibido la torta.Realmente es un servicio excelente... los felicito.... Les aseguro que solicitaré más tortas..
Ustedes triunfarán y les irá MUY BIEN...

Recibe un fuerte abrazo y les deseo, sinceramente, MUCHO$ EXITO$

Con aprecio

Luis

Project Information

Total budget in US$ : -
Country of activity: Peru [PE]

Contact Information

Edwin and Maria del Carmen San Roman

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