In Chipursan Valley in Upper Hunza, close to the Afghan border, roads, distance and social rules shape economic opportunity. Winters are long, journeys are difficult, and the economy depends heavily on a short tourist season. Local products find buyers when visitors arrive, but sales fall when winter or a crisis stops travel. Women producing goods at home face extra barriers to reaching customers. Aziza Soleh, who comes from Chipursan, recognised that these women did not lack talent. The problem was the distance between the maker and the market.
The COVID-19 lockdown exposed that weakness. Aziza was in Hunza when tourism and normal trade slowed sharply. Travelling through nearby communities, she saw women making valuable products but unable to find buyers outside their villages. This led to MountainShop, an online platform promoting and selling goods from Gilgit-Baltistan. It began with 20 women, without a large team or major investment. By 2022, it had 150 registered women sellers, according to an interview Aziza gave to WealthPK, and registration was free. This growth matters in a difficult environment for small producers. A Gilgit-Baltistan labour market assessment found that 62 percent of regional businesses are micro-enterprises. It also identified handicrafts as an important source of income for women, but described the sector as small and disconnected from larger markets.
MountainShop tried to close that gap practically. Women sellers collected goods from female makers, promoted them online and connected them with customers. Products included handicrafts, gemstones and shilajit, a natural mountain substance. Yet online selling is not simply posting a picture. A seller must take a clear photograph, write an accurate description, answer questions, agree on a price, arrange payment, package the product and deliver it. Weak internet, power cuts, expensive transport and poor delivery systems can interrupt any step. A digital platform cannot remove those physical obstacles, but it can save a woman from travelling for hours merely to show a product to a possible buyer.
Access to a phone is not enough either. A woman may lack the confidence or knowledge to use it for business. The United Nations Development Programme identifies limited technology access, low digital skills and online safety risks as major barriers for Pakistani women. For women whose movement is restricted by distance, family responsibilities or local expectations, selling online creates another route from home, sometimes through a device already available in the family. Aziza therefore did more than place products on a website. She taught women to present businesses online and manage digital payments. “We trained many women who didn’t know how to use the online payment system,” she told WealthPK. This describes her impact more clearly than broad claims about empowerment. A woman who depended on tourists, relatives or a local trader can begin photographing products, comparing prices, communicating with buyers and understanding payments. She may still need help with photography, packaging or delivery, but she is less dependent on whoever controls the nearest physical market.
Aziza was also learning. She did not start as a business expert and said she was “totally blank about business requirements” before joining a National Incubation Center program. There she met trainers and entrepreneurs and learned the basic systems needed to develop a startup. Instead of hiding her inexperience, she sought guidance and shared her knowledge with other women. She had no unlimited funding, perfect technology or ready-made network; her strength was recognising a local problem and turning what she learned into something useful. Her work later expanded into digital training. Her professional profile identifies her as MountainShop’s head and an area coordinator with CIRCLE Women Association. CIRCLE’s program description says its Digital Literacy Program covers financial management, online safety and social media for business growth. These lessons connect technology with pricing, budgeting, promotion and customer communication.
The results should not be exaggerated. Public reporting gives no clear figures for MountainShop’s total sales, individual women’s incomes or the number of registered sellers who built lasting businesses. Registration does not guarantee financial independence. A social media page cannot repair a broken road, training cannot stabilise the internet, and every order still requires packaging, transport and a paying buyer. MountainShop offers another route to the market, not a complete solution. Aziza connected home-based producers with customers they struggled to reach and showed that digital skills matter most when tied to real tasks: photographing a product, calculating its price, speaking with a buyer or receiving payment. A smartphone cannot automatically overcome poverty or social restrictions, but it can become a shop counter, classroom and link to the outside world. Her work is not an overnight revolution or perfect success story. It is a steady widening of what women can do where they already live. Where roads close and the internet fails, even one reliable path to a customer can make a difference.