Ever since my marriage, I did not think of doing any business of my own. Although I had the experience of growing vegetables and agricultural goods, it was on a small scale. Later on, with the influence of Tawni Golder, the daughter of my brother-in-law, and Jibonanondo Ray, a local entrepreneur, I thought of starting my business with vermicompost as my main product. This is how my entrepreneurial journey took flight.

It has been more than 6 years since I started my business. Joytu Dairy Farm was the venture of my husband and mine. I added my vermicompost business to my vegetable plantation and dairy farm. Initially, people were skeptical about vermicompost because they were not sure about its benefits and efficiency. However, soon they realized it was completely organic and effective fertilizer. I started getting orders of 8/10 kgs of vermicompost from many farmers. Soon my business started to grow.

Apart from vermicompost, I also grow fresh vegetables such as ol, potato in our backyard. The best thing about planting these vegetables is that I use my vermicompost as a  fertilizer. While the production depends on various factors, it usually comes out well. I get to earn more than BDT 15,000 per month from my vermicompost and vegetable sales. 

We also have 8 cows that we nurture on our farm. All our ventures are interdependent. We get good manure from the cow dung and use that on our vegetable plants. So, the vegetables grow healthy and fresh. The cows produce 3/4 kg milk daily. We use that for ourselves and sell the rest of it to households. It adds another BDT 4000 to my daily income.

The pandemic situation was not something we could easily tackle. We did not have many orders for our compost as people did not have any financial stability. For months, there was little to very low demand for our vermicompost. Before the pandemic, we used to sell  2/3 maunds of compost without any problem, but it came down to less than 10 kgs. This also affected the production of our vegetables. Still, we could make some profit out of it. Now, the situation is slowly changing. Farmers and landowners are again becoming solvent and ordering more compost from us. We hope the business will become stable again very soon.

LightCastle Partners introduced me to some new insights about running a business when I participated in their training program a while ago. It was a very informative session for me and my business. I feel more sessions like these will help entrepreneurs to learn management and technical skills to grow their business.

Currently, I have a plan to make a proper house to shelter the cows. A housing system will make it easier to manage them and also protect them from weather conditions. I still don’t have enough capital to fulfill that dream, but I’m hoping soon I’ll be able to expand my business more effectively.