Establishing goals and meeting opportunities....The Mahalakshmi Saras Mart and MILAP....

Establishing goals and meeting opportunities....The Mahalakshmi Saras Mart , Kharghar, and the launch of MILAP....

The National Rural Livelihoods Mission has nurtured several state missions under its protective shield. The Maharashtra State Rural Livelihoods Mission Umed is also growing under this umbrella. The last two years have witnessed a phenomenal extension with increase in number of blocks under the intensive fold from 84 to 256 and the number of SHGs going up from one lakh to three lakhs. Financial support and linkages have also been growing and Rs. 439 crores have been made available to the community by way of Revolving Fund and Community Investment Fund during the last 4 years. These have led to banks providing linkages by way of loans to the extent of Rs.4000 crores.
The Mission's thrust has been on providing means for sustainable livelihoods and Maharashtra has made significant strides by providing access to over 5 lakh livelihoods genrating incomes of over Rs. 500 crores. Despite that finding markets, tying up SHGs with forward and backward linkages is still a challenge.
Annual Mahalakshmi Saras fairs, district and divisional Saras fairs keep happening. However providing space for continuous marketing of products is the biggest concern.
The Gram Vikas Bhavan, GVB, a state of art building has been constructed by the Rural Development Department to function as an institute for training and capacity building. It also has 30 stalls for exhibition and sale of products by made by SHGs. The GVB has been fully operationalised since last 6 months and used for various trainings. The stalls were however not put into use.
Time and again there has been a constant demand from all stakeholders for a permanent place near Mumbai for sale of SHG products. The stalls at GVB were ready to be put to use. Seizing this golden opportunity we decided to furnish the stalls and set up the Mahalakshmi Saras Mart, a long pending goal.
The inauguration of the stalls by the Hon"ble Minister, Pankaja Munde was therefore extremely satisfying. SHGs constantly seeking urban markets now have a window to show case and display their products.
Another important aspect is increasing the size and scale of products, diversifying them, upscaling their quality, their finish and packaging, standardising them, displaying their content details, reaching national and international markets. Some of the SHGs are doing business between Rs.5 lakhs and Rs.35 lakhs and need support and guidance to understand global markets.
This requires a devoted and dedicated team and organisation to provide them with technical support.
Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), has been a pioneer in the space of innovation and entrepreneurship through its various initiatives in partnership with both Central and State governments. It has escalated businesses of social start-ups through initiatives like Millennium Alliance and
India Innovation Growth Programme. It has also been instrumental in providing training and mentorship to entrepreneurs across India through its Innovation Incubator xLr8ap in the state of Andhra Pradesh
in collaboration with the University of Texas, and another incubator initiative in partnership with Google, Google Nexus.
Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) came up with this unique idea of providing support to train SHG’s who had reached up to a certain level of enterprise and taking them to the next level.
The MILAP programme (Maharashtra innovation livelihoods acceleration
program) was designed to converge the ongoing efforts of MSRLM with new and innovative training methodologies not only to provide sustainability to rural enterprises but also to ensure business growth and development.
Together they will provide incubation
and acceleration support to the SHGs to increase their revenues substantially
and provide forward linkages across India and globally for long term business tie-ups. Through this initiative SHGs will undergo rigorous trainings and will be provided handholding support to raise product standards and design to match the competition on global level. This unique programme will not only train the SHGs at the Incubation Centre but also provide an on-ground mentorship, which will enable them to incorporate the imparted training in their daily business practices. Finally, the SHGs will be sufficiently trained and would have learned enough to sustain the incorporated practices and training.
The MILAP programme was launched in the presence of Hon"ble Minister for Rural Development, Pankaja Munde, Hon"ble Member of the Parliament, Mr. Shrirang Barne, Hon"ble MLA, Mr. Prashant Thakur, Hon"ble MLC, Mr. Niranjan Davkhare, Hon"ble Mayor of Panvel, Ms. Vandana Chotmal.
The best performing banks in the public and private sector and RRBs were felicitated by the Hon'ble Minister. These included Bank of India, State Bank of India, IDBI, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Maharashtra Grameen Bank and Vidarbha Grameen Bank.
The Hon"ble Minister also distributed cheques of Revolving Fund, Community Investment Fund, Convergence Fund to the SHGs.
MSRLM is a stickler for maintaining hygienic HR policy. An employee's widow was given Rs.5 lakh on account of insurance due to his sad demise while on duty.
The highlight of the programme was the speech by Kamal Kumbhaar who rose from a small time entrepreneur to a big time businesswoman thanks to Umed. She had joined an SHG under Umed MSRLM and managed to eke a livelihood with 15 eggs. Today she generates 2.5 lakh eggs and dreams of having a unit for 15 lakh eggs. She aspires to empower and create many more women entrepreneurs like herself.
As the evening unfolded , there were so many success stories to smile about. The english song rendered by the SHGs got many claps.
MSRLM Umed is on a threshold where many SHG’s have generated minimum business through their enterprise. Through the large canvass of FICCI they hoped to reach newer horizons.
For all of us at UMED MSRLM this is a big challenge and we hope to achieve it.
As it is rightly said, "A goal established, an opportunity met, these are the beginnings of great achievements.....'