Place:- Muradabad, District- Khargone
Muradabad village is situated in Khargone district of Madhya Pradesh. The village has 830 households and majority of the people are engaged in agriculture as their livelihood. Few of them work as agriculture labour as well. Major crops grown in the area are maize, cotton, wheat, chilli and vegetables.
In 2017 Navrachna Trust promoted women self-help groups in this village. Jai Matadi Self-Help groups is one of them. It has total 13 members. They are doing savings and inter loaning regularly from the last 10 months. Meanwhile it was felt that only saving and inter loaning won’t serve the purpose. They need some income generation activity as well to get involved in some productive work which would help in increasing their economic status as well. With this thought, the Masala Making Unit was set up.
The unit is managed and run through SHG itself. During the monthly meeting, the SHG members make plan for procuring chilli. They collect money from each member which includes travel expenses as well. Then two members go to the market for raw material procurement. They find good quality chilli in Khargone and Kasrawad Market at reasonable price. These women are good at identifying good quality Chilli. After purchasing the chillies, they clean it in groups and grind them. Then they make packets (250 gm, 500 gm) of chilli powder of 250gm, 500gms packets.
The major challenge was to motivate the women in the SHG group and make it sustainable for them. The women were not confident and were apprehensive thinking about the pitfalls of business. Hence, proper training and continuous support has been given to help them in the set up and have provided them with market linkages and monitoring has been done to keep track of the business and support them as needed
The price of chilli is 100 to 120 Rs. /kg. They sell the powder at Rs.160 to 200/kg. The plastic bags for packaging cost Rs.30 for 25 Kg Chilli. They purchase 25 Kg chilli simultaneously, clean and process it. Then they pack and sell and earn profit of Rs. 20/Kg. The details are as follows.
