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AyRojgar
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What workedThe owner of a garment unit in Sherpur, in a Prothom Alo report

A tailor who started with 10 taka now runs a 200-worker unit

She began with 10 taka in hand and a sewing machine bought on installment. A 1998 training course and a 25,000-taka loan became a training centre, and the business now carries about 50 lakh taka of investment, 200 workers and about 1 lakh taka a month of her own income.

This woman in Sherpur learned to sew from her mother and began taking tailoring orders with 10 taka of cash in hand, on a machine her husband bought on installment despite her in-laws objecting to a daughter-in-law doing tailoring work. Orders grew slowly over years of stitching at home. In 1998 she took a Department of Youth Development training course and a 25,000-taka loan and opened a sewing training centre in the Digharpar area of the town, teaching other women block and batik work. That centre grew into two garment-making establishments with showrooms in the municipal New Market. The report puts the current investment at about 50 lakh taka, the workforce at 200 people and her own income, after expenses, at about 1 lakh taka a month. One of the women she trained now earns about 40,000 taka a month; another earns 5,000-6,000.

Lessons

  1. 1.Training other women was not charity here: it built the skilled workforce the unit later ran on
  2. 2.Ten taka can start it, but roughly a decade of home stitching came before any loan-funded expansion

Published with the person's permission, without revealing who they are.

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