1. Enabling our shop owners to weather this period of low sales: Our core customers – rural shop owners – are severely affected by the shutdown. Only grocery shops are able to operate; the majority of our shops (which sell agricultural products, houseware, hardware, electricals, etc.) are shut. Many shops have outstanding payments with us or are stocking our inventory. Our revenue relies on our shops being able to operate again, and so our focus is on supporting our shop owners through this challenging period. 2. Retaining our employees: We are focused on engaging and retaining our Sales Executives, who are the key employees that build our relationships with our shop network. Losing members of our team will mean re-building our sales force and our shop owner relationships. 3. Receiving governmental approvals to move essential goods: As a distributor of essential goods, we have received local approvals to operate in some of our offices. Our daily focus is on obtaining more of these approvals and on ensuring that we can receive stock of essential goods that are currently stuck in warehouses in major cities. 4. Sourcing new products for COVID relief: Our catalogue of essential products can contribute to shops’ sales once they can reopen. For example, our agricultural sprayers are used both for agricultural purposes and for disinfecting surfaces. We are also looking for new products, such as cloth masks, that can be distributed through our network as part of relief efforts.

Resilience - we're improving the broader infrastructure for responding to pandemic outbreaks.,Recovery - we're positioned to support in the recovery of those directly affected.,Response - we're responding directly to issues caused or exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak.

I have a market ready product/service. I have sold to customers.

Our team has been working on changing the technology-for-development ecosystem for the past 10 years. We started off as engineers designing socially impactful technologies, and have watched as our products were designed in vain and did not reach or impact their intended end beneficiaries. We have collectively worked in 14 developing countries, living in villages and experiencing first-hand the problems that local shop owners face with low margin, low quality products, and the problems that end customers face with lack of awareness of and access to socially impactful technologies. We have written Bachelors and Masters dissertations on these problems, conducting extensive research in southern India and eastern Africa on the last-mile dissemination gap for socially impactful technologies and how local shops are excluded from the global marketplace. We also in part come rural areas in southern India, and have personally experiences these challenges when growing up. We continue to watch our families experience these challenges to this day. Since launching Essmart, we have spoken to thousands of shop owners and villagers to continue to learn about, verify, and refine the challenges that people face in accessing life-improving, income-generating goods that can improve their businesses and lives.

India, with an office in the US.

No