Started on a Tk 3.5 lakh loan, restarted with 16 workers after a fire; now a 400-worker footwear factory

According to a November 2021 Prothom Alo report, a woman working a job in Dhaka took several Youth Development trainings while looking for a business. Her husband worked in shoe marketing, which gave her the idea of making shoes, but neither knew how to start and capital was minimal. An official from her former workplace lent her about Tk 3.5 lakh in several instalments over a year. Kusumkoli started in December 2005; after 5-6 years of hard work it began making shoes for the country's top footwear brands. But on 25 June 2012 the factory burned to ashes. She restarted with only 16 workers in a small space inside someone else's factory. In 2014 she spent 14 days studying the market in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and opened a company and showroom there called Vinca, selling shoes exported from Bangladesh. In 2019 she won the national award for best medium entrepreneur; that year she ended work for big brands to focus on her own, and bought land at Latifpur, Gazipur, for a compliant factory. Of her two brands, Vinca is mainly sandal-type footwear and Dr. Mark is medicated footwear. With Covid, the Kuala Lumpur showroom has been shut since March 2020 and exports stalled; she expanded sales in small towns in Chattogram, Chandpur and Barishal and opened a showroom at Bashundhara City in July 2021. Although the factory had to close for a while, she laid off none of her 400 workers and paid regular wages and bonuses, and she paid Tk 25 lakh in income tax during the pandemic.