Pushing a Cart of Hope

A project that redefines the word Bou promises to turn housewives into entrepreneurs across India

PICTURE SPEAK

FAIR DEAL: Selling off the shelf from a Bou cart

Banerjee, 35, seated in her Project Sukanya office at Bhowanipore, explains that the name is apt since the project is meant to generate employment for women. Project Sukanya is a unique supply chain system that Banerjee, a small entrepreneur, had started in 2005. She had taken the business model to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who, impressed with it, assured all help. Between then and now, Banerjee has invested Rs 24 lakh and set up a website where she invited women interested in selling handicrafts and homemade products to join the project. She received 1,670 applications and picked only the feasible ones. The project then funded these women to make their products in a mass scale, to be sold from the hand-pulled carts later.

Since February, Project Sukanya has been selling the products from these carts. To save costs, Banerjee’s team has designed and patented these carts giving them the look of a mobile shop. Two women are on the counter from 9 am to 9 pm, working in shifts. Now the city has 14 such outlets, but by November, there should be 53 of them. “Then, I expect a turnover of Rs 1 lakh per month per cart,” says Banerjee, who pays her saleswomen Rs 2,200 per month plus a commission of 50 paise per item sold.

The products that the Bous sell have also been chosen with care. Now they are limited to clay handicrafts (a dying industry in West Bengal that has high export potential), handloom (a craft rural women excel in), flowers (village women are growing them in their yards) and spices (a produce that requires less land but yields huge profits). The chain of intermediaries have been minimised to keep the price low. Next, the project will extend to tiffin and office lunches. The food would be sourced from housewives who want to make extra money. The project has got support from some quarters including Kolkata Police, Metro Railways, Kolkata Municipal Corporation, and the Union Bank of India, which is helping with the funding.

Also, offers to run carts are pouring in from the Andhra Pradesh Government and a university in Jammu and Kashmir. In two years, Project Sukanya hopes to set up 5,000 carts across the country. Its ultimate target is to have one lakh Bou carts, turning the humble housewife into an entrepreneur.

Index