The trend of entrepreneurship is growing outside the metro cities as well; but a few women have done an outstanding job of starting up in the most backward districts of the country, thereby providing employment opportunities to the local people too. (Representational image)
The trend of entrepreneurship is growing outside the metro cities as well; but a few women have done an outstanding job of starting up in the most backward districts of the country, thereby providing employment opportunities to the local people too. (Representational image)
But the majority of women entrepreneurs in India are focused on metro cities as their base, especially for access to the right market and hiring suitable talent. The trend of entrepreneurship is growing outside the metro cities as well; but a few women have done an outstanding job of starting up in the most backward districts of the country, thereby providing employment opportunities to the local people too. Read on to know more about them.

Pabiben Rabari, Kutch (Gujarat)
Pabiben, who to the Rabari community of Gujarat, runs an enterprise that empowers women artisans - Pabiben.com. The all-women company makes bags, dhurries, files, quilts, cushion covers, and more. It employs a special craft form invented by Pabiben - Hari Jari - which is machine application of ready-made elements.

In 1998, Pabiben – who never finished formal education - joined a Rabari women's group, and worked on her embroidery skills. She soon became the best artisan of the groupand went on to empower the women around her. Through her business, she has created employment opportunities for over 60 women in her village.

Shaikh Raziya, Bastar (Chhattisgarh)
Raziya started Bastar Food in 2017 to uplift Bastar's tribal women and educated youth, often labelled Naxals by default, by creating job opportunities specifically for them. Bastar Food sells Mahua ladoos and bars, which has won the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, among many others.

Shaikh Raziya
Raziya, who holds a master’s degree in microbiology, has earlier worked as a researcher on health and nutrition at an Ramkrishna Sarada Seva Ashram, an NGO, funded by the Tata Trusts. She started Bastar Food after due R&D, in which she found that mahua flower, a source of natural sweetener found in Bastar, has a high nutritional value.

Akshya Shree, Tripura
Silpakarman is a for-profit social enterprise that works with artisan clusters in Tripura to fashion a contemporary range of products that includes furniture, home décor products, and others. The startup has two workshops in Tripura, and has also partnered with five artisan community clusters to manufacture the products.
Its founder Askhya Shree, originally from New Delhi, launched the platform in 2017 with Rs.15 lakh from her savings. She aims to bring consumers back to their roots, and introduce rural crafts to an international platform. She has pursued a short course in Export Management from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi.

Swastika Stuti, Ranchi (Jharkhand)
A graduate from the School of Fashion Technology in Pune, Swastika Stuti, 27, is the first haute couture designer in Ranchi. Although Swastika had job offers from prominent brands after college, she decided to launch her own label to build her creativity.

Swastika Stuti
In 2015, Swastika transformed the garage of her parents’ house in Ranchi into a studio to start up. She has clients in the US and Europe as well as among Ranchi’s expat community today. Swastika, who employs women from lower income families so as to enable them to earn a livelihood, has showcased her designs at three fashion shows.

Subhrarani Mohanty, Jagatsinghpur (Odisha)

In 2018, Subhrarani Mohanty and her husband Satyabrata Mohanty, launched SS Associates, a manufacturer of low-carbon kitchen cooking equipment. The inspiration behind this idea was her own struggles with high carbon emissions from traditional stoves. She even did a detailed study of these stoves and their technology, and saw a potential business which makes low-carbon cooking equipment.

Investing Rs.13 lakh to start up, she ensured that her products are not just smokeless, but also cost-friendly. Additionally, they can also be used to reduce the biomass deposit around the house by converting biomass waste into clean fuel, at little cost.