Before my marriage, I used to be a school teacher in Shariatpur. In 2000, I left my job and came to Jessore with my husband and continued my life as a housewife. He was an area manager of a private company. In 2015, my husband left the job in hopes of moving to England. The process got postponed and he has been unemployed since then. In 2018, we finally came to know that the opportunity was a scam and the money we paid could never be reclaimed.

To run my family, I used to look for different income sources. My in-laws had mango trees in their lands. In summer, we used to bring fresh mangoes and I used to share them with neighbours out of courtesy. One day, one of my neighbours asked me whether I would sell 5 kg mangoes to her. I was completely unprepared for it. I was confused about pricing the mangoes. Moreover, I did not have any weight machine to accurately measure the mangoes. I decided to give her some based on my estimations and took a minimal price. 

My neighbour loved our mangoes and praised them a lot. Our mangoes were of high quality and free of preservatives. Through her, other people learned about our mangoes and it worked like ‘word of mouth’. Soon, more people were interested in buying our mangoes. We saw an opportunity and grabbed it. We brought one maund mango from our garden, which went out of stock in a day. Then, I kept bringing more. Since then, we have been selling mangoes in summer and became an occasional mango seller. However, the business was seasonal and we needed another source of income.

Around 2018, one of the guardians from my son’s school brought some hand-stitch work from Bibiana Fashion House. Back in 2007, when my son joined the school, I had learned decorative stitching work. I took the work from the guardian and gradually got into the boutique business. I started Ratna Boutique with an investment of 50,000 takas. Primarily, I used to sell the dresses from my home. Unfortunately, it was not going very smoothly. I lacked knowledge regarding bookkeeping. I could not keep track of whether I was making losses or profits. Moreover, the boutique business was getting too competitive for someone like me with little to no investment. There were numerous sellers with large investments who used to import dresses from India. Some had connections with garment factories or boutique houses giving them an edge over me in pricing and variety.

I could not manage big finances and my business was dying. I could not expand my business as I had little access to finance. Also, people were corrupt and it was difficult to know whom to trust. Once I paid 30,000 Taka in advance to a supplier who later switched off his phone and never contacted me again. 

The pandemic proved to be very harmful to my businesses, particularly for mango trading. Before the pandemic, the business was profitable. The supermarket chain Shwapno used to take mangoes from us too. Seeing the potential, we leased a few mango tree gardens. While the supply chain was already disrupted due to the pandemic, the cyclone ‘Amphan’ added to the injury. Along with mangoes, most of the trees were destroyed by the pandemic. Sadly, we could not even sell 5 kg mangoes. We incurred huge losses amounting to 10 lacs taka. 

As we had already lost a big amount of money, we had little luck in running the boutique business. Realizing this, I chose to shift my focus. I wanted to sell something that people need every day. Something that would require less money to start, less reliance on suppliers. For me, the answer was spices. Like every other basic need, people need spices every day. This year, I started selling nearly all sorts of spices including chilli powder, cumin powder, ginger powder, turmeric powder, black cumin, cardamom, clove etc. My products are getting great responses and it makes me hopeful again. I’m selling the spices under the name ‘Alif Enterprise’. 

I have always been curious about learning new things and finding new opportunities. Hence, I used to engage myself in different training programs. One of the trainers introduced me to LightCastle Partners. I joined one of their training programs in 2019 and learned a lot about running a business.  Before the training, I wasn’t familiar with the concept of direct and indirect costs and it helped increase my understanding of business significantly. Now, I have learned to prioritise bookkeeping. 

We are still in a struggling phase, but I dream to expand my current business in future. I am currently focusing on improving the packaging of my products. It saddens me to say that we don’t have any modern equipment to grind the spices. All of the spices are hand-blended with mortar and pestle (hamandista). If we could buy spice grinders, we could efficiently grow our business. 1-1.5 lacs Taka would be required to buy a high-quality grinder. If everything goes well by the grace of Almighty, we hope to start a mill of our own in future.