The case study presents the life and entrepreneurial journey of a woman from East Delhi who overcame significant odds to establish a successful business in the spice industry. Her story serves as a lens through which to analyze the socio-cultural and economic challenges and opportunities faced by women
The case study presents the life and entrepreneurial journey of a woman from East Delhi who overcame significant odds to establish a successful business in the spice industry Her story serves as a lens through which to analyze the socio-cultural and economic challenges and opportunities faced by women entrepreneurs in India. It highlights issues such as lack of access to credit, gender biases, and safety concerns.
The research aimed to provide insights into the socio-cultural, economic, and legal factors that impact women entrepreneurs in the context of international trade.
The researcher scheduled her first meeting with the respondent in March 2019 and conducted interviews using an interview schedule tool with Bommuluri Bhavana Rao open-ended questions. She also recorded a series of interviews with the same respondent.
1. The respondent Mrs Maheshwari lives in East Delhi. She was married in 1984 and is over 60 years of age.
2. She comes from a lower-middle-class family in Hapur and lives with her father, mother, six sisters, and one brother. Her father did not have a stable income but she somehow struggled to finish her graduation.
3. After marriage in 1984 she came to Delhi and stayed in Delhi ever since with her husband and two children.
4. She was never in any full-time employment. She took training in Khadi for masala and papad making in the year 2003 when her husband met with an accident and became bedridden.
She had no choice but to do something for her family with a husband and her two young children who were born in 1985 and 1990 respectively.
Mrs Maheshwari started in the year 2003 after the respondent thought of setting up a masala unit after training from Khadi Gram Udyog. (Khadi Gram Udyog is called Khadi and Village Industries Commission now and its head office is located in Mumbai).
8.Mrs Maheshwari underwent the training under a subsidy scheme of the commission for which she had enrolled herself in the same year that is 2003. To set up a masala unit she had nothing but a gold chain which she sold and got money for the raw material.
9. Mrs Maheshwari told the researcher that this was a big decision of her life and during those days there were no special schemes for entrepreneurs to avail loans and credit.
10. She mortgaged the family flat at Patparganj took a loan of rupees 6 lacs and proceeded with setting up a unit in Samaspur Village in East Delhi.
11, She is planning to shift her residence to Greater Noida.
13. Maheshwari, Gram Udyog started with 5 to 10 products initially and now sells about 150 products all over Delhi and NCR in 35 outlets of MORE, Nafed, Sanchta, Air Force Canteens, and Khadi outlets including outlets in CP.
14. They had a tie-up with Big Bazaar but it did not work well for them.
15. The turnover of 2018-19 is estimated to be One Crore INR which is a jump of 20 percent over the previous financial year. The respondent was quite confident of it when she said this.
16. As regarding expansion plans, Mrs Maheshwari said that she is talking to outlets in Punjab who had approached her herself, and in Allahabad, Kanpur, and Lucknow.
17. She sees that there will be logistical problems as these outlets wanted to use smaller vehicles for transport but the respondent insisted on bigger trucks to deliver the products as she feared that the products would be damaged due to space issues in the smaller vehicles.
18. Maheshwari Masalas are available only in outlets in Punjab. She also mentioned that it was not so easy to expand due to manpower issues as she feels that hired persons cannot do justice to the control and management of the business as she would do.
19. Her husband who is older than her in age and who had met with an accident in 2003 sits in the factory these days as she is taking care of the marketing of the product and continuously meets people. Her children live out of Delhi and she mostly depends on labour for running her factory.
20. She mentioned that to meet people she uses public transport to save travel costs.
21. Mrs Maheshwari said she had a lot of family support and according to her otherwise she would not have been able to go for exhibitions in far-off places like Chandigarh for which she had to stay away from home and family for long periods, sometimes as long as one to two months.
22. With staying out of the house till late at night to oversee the sales in the showrooms like Khadi in CP, she said that women are very unsafe even in central areas like Connaught Place where a couple of times men misbehaved with her by asking if she would accompany her for shopping etc.
23. One senior manager in the same trade called her to the office in the evening when everyone left and she could sense something wrong and she immediately had to rush home. The next day onwards that person made some comments about how he waited for her but she did not come despite him asking her to come to his office.
24. Mrs Maheshwari was of about 45 years of age then. She mentioned some more incidents when she felt unsafe and this is possibly the reason that she felt that being a woman was a drawback in being an entrepreneur. She also mentioned rampant corruption and how those responsible for payments for her goods always asked for bribes to the tune of ten percent of her cheque amount.
25. Sometimes she gave in and sometimes she fought. And when she fought, she faced harassment. During those years she was so scared of the people that she also fell prey to a newspaper advertisement which was a fraud and duped her of Rs. 15000.
26. She attributes her wisdom to all that she learned by getting cheated in the beginning years of her entrepreneurship.
27. For start Maheshwari Gram Udyog applied for a loan at the Bank of Baroda in 2003 under the KVIC subsidy scheme. She was told that she would not get any loan and that unless she had collateral, she could not approach the bank for a loan.
28. She showed her flat in which she resided at IP Extension as collateral and a loan of 6 lacs and 25 thousand was disbursed, and this too not until she had met the General Manager of the Bank. She is paying her installments for this. The house is still in the bank’s name.
29. Regarding the unit where her products are produced, she said that she rented it for 6500 in the year 2003. Today she pays a rent of 28000 for the same area. She has 8 full-time women workers and three boys. She has about 7 to 8 temporary workers at any given point of time of which more are women.
30. MGUL makes about 150 products today. Despite financial problems like cash flow issues, the unit is doing well. The products are registered and licensed as per the food safety standards of India and the respondent said that she knows the procedures about these.
31. When the researcher asked the respondent about her expansion plans again, she mentioned that she is already 60 plus in age and would be difficult due to this though she was in perfect health, she had her apprehensions, including the fact that her kids are not going to continue with her work as they are in different professions.
32. The second reason she gave was for exports she was fluent in foreign languages and has only workable English. Her main mode of communication is Hindi and therefore she feels that it might be difficult for her to carry on in the field of exports. She however was not averse to the idea of expanding to International Markets and knows reasonably well of the quality of the products required for exports.
33. Regarding online business she tried selling her products on Amazon once but due to logistical issues like packaging single product for every single order, she did not go ahead with it as it required a lot of logistical infrastructure and of course money.
34. She therefore confined her products of offline outlets only. Financial constraints were also mentioned by the respondent for exports to other countries.
35. She said that though she knows that now loans and schemes are available for exporters, she also thinks that what is on paper turns different for people who are vulnerable like women when it is implemented.
36. She says out of ten thousand applications about ten are selected and out of these ten, people who are known to bank managers or to anyone inside the system are about fifty percent. So, the loan disbursal rate is 10/10000.
37. Digitisation had improved things but only at the middlemen level. Once processing is to be done, the officers responsible make it difficult for the common man.
38. Regarding the drawbacks and benefits of technology, she said technology has only helped her and she never saw it as a drawback. She said that her product Bhuna Dalia is the first to show when one Google roasts Dalia and therefore it helps in marketing her products and the visibility of her products.
39. Regarding the government schemes, the respondent said that the PM EGP scheme is a wonderful scheme. But as mentioned before, the beneficiaries do not benefit due to lack of education, and lack of awareness generation.
40. She suggested that to improve the situation schools should have entrepreneurship skill training, and make people aware of these schemes from the school level.
41. Regarding patenting she said she had never thought of patenting her products.
6. Now her children are both well settled and her son and daughter-inlaw are living in the UK as engineers and her daughter is settled in Ahmedabad as an entrepreneur in exports herself.
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