Water hyacinth and hogla handicraft

About the business

Lifting water hyacinth from canals and beels, drying it in the sun, and weaving it into trays, baskets and doormats. The work is done sitting on the verandah and needs no machine at all. Across nine villages in Kaliganj, Sadar and Kotchandpur of Jhenaidah, 800 women work at home in 40 groups for a firm called BD Creation, and 35,000 to 40,000 pieces a month go to 82 countries. But look at the money calmly. Shampa Debi of Talsar village in Kotchandpur makes 12 to 15 pieces a day in the gaps between housework, is paid Tk 20 a piece, and earns about Tk 3,000 a month. The company delivers the raw material to her house and collects the finished goods. So this is not a business of your own - it is piece work at home. The risk is low and so is the control: somebody else sets the price. Two things are worth knowing first. One, water hyacinth is no longer free; as the work spread, dried hyacinth now has to be bought at Tk 40 a kg from local people who lift it from the river and dry it. Two, the barrier is not the raw material, it is the buyer. The Export Promotion Bureau puts Bangladesh's handicraft exports at only USD 380 million against a global market of about USD 32 billion for these goods - a 1.18 percent share - and the cash incentive has been cut from 20 percent to 6 percent since LDC graduation.

Unit economics

What you need to start

• Dried water hyacinth at Tk 40 a kg (Jhenaidah, May 2026). Rice straw and date palm leaf are used the same way. On piece work the company delivers this raw material to the house.Starting stock
• Trade licence from the union parishad, municipality or city corporation if you collect, make and sell on your own account: form Tk 10, book Tk 50, standard tax Tk 30, stamp Tk 150-300, licence fee by trade type. Women doing piece work need no licence; the Baluhar organiser says no extra formalities are required.Licence
• Export Registration Certificate from the Office of the Chief Controller of Imports and Exports if you want to ship abroad yourself. The fee and renewal terms could not be verified here. Most village makers work for an exporting firm rather than exporting themselves.Licence
• Hand weaving to a fixed size with a tight weave. The firm trains first and gives work after. No machine is involved, so the skill is the only asset.Skill
• People who lift and dry the hyacinth, and an exporting firm or its local organiser to take the goods. BANGLACRAFT, the Bangladesh Handicrafts Manufacturers and Exporters Association, is the body those buyers belong to.Supplier
• The verandah or yard: a place to sit and work and open ground to dry the stalks in the sun. No separate workshop is needed; all 800 women in Jhenaidah work in their own homes.Workspace

How the work is done

1. 1First find out which firm gets this work done in your area and who comes to collect. Weaving before the buyer is fixed leaves the goods sitting in the house; in this trade the barrier is the buyer, not the raw material.
2. 2Join a firm and take their training. In Jhenaidah 800 women work in 40 groups; joining a group brings both the raw material and the work to your door.
3. 3Lifting and drying the hyacinth is a separate earning: pull it from the river or canal, dry it in the sun and sell it at Tk 40 a kg. For anyone with no time to weave, this is the way in.
4. 4Fix a drying space in the yard or on the roof. Without sun in the monsoon the hyacinth rots and darkens, and dark stalks are rejected for export goods.
5. 5Start with one product only: a doormat, a tray or a basket. Repeating the same item makes the hands fast, and the count per day is the income.
6. 6Keep the size and the tightness of the weave exactly like the sample. On a foreign order a finger's difference in size sends the whole lot back, and the piece rate is then cut.
7. 7Write down how many pieces you handed over and how much you were paid. In piece work the record is your responsibility, not the company's.
8. 8Form a group. Alone you cannot do the work of five or ten, but with twenty women in one village the company sends a vehicle to collect; for one household it does not.
9. 9To trade on your own account take a trade licence, and to export directly take an Export Registration Certificate from the Office of the Chief Controller of Imports and Exports.
10. 10Contact the BSCIC district office; the Jhenaidah deputy director says such small industries get full support if they approach. For credit, Bangladesh Bank has described a Tk 30,000 crore fund lending at 5-7 percent.
11. 11Stock dried hyacinth ahead of the three monsoon months. Because it cannot be dried then, that is exactly when the raw material costs the most.

Sources

• সিটি কর্পোরেশন থেকে ট্রেড লাইসেন্স প্রাপ্তির ধাপ সমূহ

  Collected: 16 Sept 2026

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

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