This qualitative research aims to explore the challenges faced by rural youth entrepreneurs in conducting digital marketing. Digital marketing activities carried out by them are still limited in social media and e-commerce applications. The challenges are fraud, internet infrastructure, delivery services, the development of digital technology adaptation and work-life balance.

An increasing number of women are becoming empowered with changing cultural dynamics, gender equality, education and technology. The use of Internet and social media platforms by businesses at various stages is on the rise. Despite its benefits, women entrepreneurs in developing countries are less inclined towards using the online mediums for their business in comparison to men. This study observes activities where women entrepreneurs use online mediums for business purposes, understands challenges faced in doing so, reasons behind such challenges and how do they deal with them. Qualitative research is conducted via semi-structured interviews with women entrepreneurs at India. Findings indicate that there are commonly prevalent issues faced by Indian women entrepreneurs while using online mediums. As a way out, they either choose to shy away from digital mediums or seek external help. They are more comfortable using digital mediums where the communication and onus is one way, there is limited need to trust the other person or there is less possibility of receiving damaging comments in public. For interactive activities, women refrain from using online mediums. Financial, social and cultural factors also play a role in keeping women entrepreneurs behind from using online mediums for their business.

Over the last decade, the sharing economy that covers systems of organised sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping among communities of peers on Internet platforms has emerged as a major disruptive pattern in capitalist economies (Botsman and Rogers, 2010). Prior research on the sharing economy has mainly concentrated on young, well-educated urban users and therefore particularly underlined “noble” motivations for participation, such as hedonic, environmental, and political reasons. This research looks beyond this “hipster” view of sharing entrepreneurs and focuses on French deprived mothers who use peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms to survive. Drawing on the literature on subsistence markets in developing countries (e.g., Viswanathan et al., 2014), it investigates Facebook buy-and-sell groups as a new form of subsistence markets in developed countries. Using a multi-method approach involving in-depth interviews, netnography, and participatory observation on Facebook buy-and-sell groups, it more particularly explores how Facebook specific digital features participate in these emerging markets. The findings indicate that subsistence markets’ emergence in developed countries on Facebook is founded on new digital features that (re)create structural, cognitive and relational forms of social capital. This research thus offers interesting contributions and implications for public policy makers engaged in the regulation of the sharing economy.