Four taka on a pen, five on a notebook: 10,000 taka of sales leaves 3,000-4,000

This 29-year-old from Uttar Foliya village in Gaibandha Sadar has been blind since birth; he studied in Braille to class ten and then, with audio and scribes, up to a master's degree. When money ran short and his studies were about to stop, he began making notebooks in March 2023, earning about a thousand taka a month at first and funding his own education with it. In October that year he heard about paper pens, traced a woman entrepreneur in Jashore through Facebook, bought a hundred of her pens to learn the method, and started making his own in November. A pen costs 6 taka to make and sells for 10; a notebook costs 15 and sells for 20. He makes about 50 pens and 100 notebooks a day and sells wholesale to schools and shops from premises renting at 500 taka a month, helped by his wife. Turnover is 9,000-10,000 taka a month for a net 3,000-4,000, which is not enough to run the household - that still rests mainly on his father's grocery shop - and he says a lack of capital stops him making as many pens and notebooks as buyers want.