Dressed in a bright red shimmering sari, Shyamat Hanif Sheikh, a 43-year-old churiwali (bangle vendor) from Sakharwadi village in Maharashtra, is a far cry from most students at a business school.
She has just learnt a basic B-School lesson that customer satisfaction leads to greater profit.
“I never paid attention to this little detail and would not bother much with customers who would walk away without buying anything from me,’’ Ms. Sheikh says. “Now I talk to them politely, sit them down; tell them to try my goods before moving on to others.”
The lesson seems to be working. Every day, Ms. Sheikh cycles 20 kilometers, roughly 12 miles, to small hamlets around Sakharwadi and once a week to the town’s main Sunday bazaar where she sells her wares. She used to earn about 6,000 rupees ($110) a month, but since enrolling in the Deshi MBA program she has nearly doubled her profit.
Now she’s thinking bigger: “I want to expand my business from bangles to include other imitation jewelry like earrings and necklaces.’’ Ms. Sheikh says she has enrolled her 21-year-old daughter in a hair and beauty class. “Inshallah someday we will open a shop selling jewelry and offering haircuts.”
Ms. Sheikh’s B-School in the Satara district of western India’s Maharashtra state, around 150 miles southeast of Mumbai, offers free classes for rural women. They cover anything from basic financial literacy and managing a financial diary to making profits as a goat herder.
More than 70,000 women have graduated from the Maan Deshi Business School for Rural Women, which was launched in 2006. These women from the hinterland of Maharashtra who had never stepped out of traditional occupations like herding and laboring have broken the mould, with many becoming businesswomen, or “Deshi Entrepreneurs.”
The Maan Deshi Foundation runs the business school, which has five centers in Maharashtra and another in Karnataka. It is the brainchild of social entrepreneur Chetna Sinha, a Mumbai born economist and a 2002 World Yale Fellow.
“Our final aim is to produce one million entrepreneurs from the B schools,’’ said Ms. Sinha.
Uma Chavan, a 27-year-old from Lonand Village in Satara, had been taught basic mechanical skills like repairing tire punctures by her husband. She enrolled at the school in April and now hopes to open her own garage and include another small scale business of grinding masala.
“I have the knowledge of doing my job but not of making this into a successful business. I want to buy our own place and machinery,’’ Ms. Chavan said.
“Any woman who walks in the Maan Deshi center is encouraged and trained to be financially independent. If they aspire to develop a particular skill, we rope in trainers and experts to impart that knowledge,” said Vanita Shinde, chief administrative officer at Maan Deshi.
Classes are also delivered to the doorsteps of women who cannot travel long distances to schools. Three buses, or mobile business schools, travel to villages, stopping for around two hours as trainers deliver classes. The buses, which can accommodate around 30 students at a time, are equipped with laptops and sewing machines.
The Deshi MBA – in which Ms. Sheikh is enrolled – started in 2010. It is the latest addition to the B-School. The course syllabus was developed by Mumbai’s SP Jain Management Institute and U.S.-based non-profit organization Accion. It offers a one-year program with lessons in cash management, trade practices and marketing, coupled with visits to businesses across Maharashtra and advice from personal mentors.
The Maan Deshi Foundation plans to open a seventh branch in May, in the city of Pune. Ms. Sinha is excited about expanding to an urban market. “A woman with a chai shop can open a Chinese stall or sell some food items. A vegetable vendor can provide home delivery, same as the milkman, and provide vegetable pouches. The opportunities are endless, the world is open to these women,” she said.
“We don’t want a woman to be known as chaiwali all her life. We want to develop them into brands through their business and make them famous,” Ms. Sinha added.
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