Nanda has been making various designs of bags - be it normal tote bags for grocery shopping or trendy handbags. She along with her friends watch youtube videos on getting ideas to design bags. Nanda used to work in the garment sector before her marriage. This induced interest in getting into tailoring for Nanda. She learned this skill early on which has been helping her earn income.  She believes that if one has limited academic qualifications then mastering a skill will help in gaining financial independence. 

Disaster Experience 
Post the massive earthquake, Nanda lived in a temporary shelter for two months. She remembers those two months were extremely difficult for her and her family but thankfully her house wasn’t damaged much so she moved to her own house after renovations. Nanda knew the technicalities of tailoring and to start her own business, she took training as well. First, she made tote bags as it is popular for grocery shopping these days. People prefer using cloth bags to plastic bags, so getting started with this product was a great decision. She then took a loan from the bank to scale up the business. Within a year she had to close her business due to the pandemic. She was unable to procure raw materials due to nationwide lockdown and now when things are getting better she isn’t able to continue it. While looking to get her business back on track she got the opportunity of having her products promoted on the Udhyami Utthan (UU) Online Shop at Thulo.Com along with getting training on ‘Building Resilient Businesses’. She thought this could be a great learning experience. 

“Fostering Resilience of Women-Led Businesses (including home-based women producers) and Consumers” is a project being implemented by Thulo.Com and Enterprise for Management, Economic Reform, and Gender Equality (EMERGE). The project is supported by United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Tayar Nepal - Improved Disaster Risk Management Project and also contributes to Udhyami Utthan (UU - https://udhyamiutthan.com/about-us/ ), an entrepreneurship empowerment initiative.

Experience as a Project Beneficiary
During the pandemic, Nanda realized that marketing and promotion are extremely important in today’s era for getting noticed and reaching a larger market. Therefore, she enjoyed all the sessions on Business Development Management (BDM) and Digital Literacy.
The costing session covered in the BDM module was very insightful and made her conscious of adding all the costs associated with creating a product.
According to Nanda, “The understanding that - Branding is completely different from marketing is something that I have realized through the branding session. Creating your brand adds value to your product which is when people buy brands rather than products.”

Nanda mentions that having training in e-commerce skills was a different experience. While there were technical steps one had to follow, it was good to have learned about how things are managed online. 

Future Plan
Nanda plans to start her store in the future and will be using social media marketing techniques. She wishes to continue her association with Thulo.Com and with Udhyami Utthan to keep up with her learnings in the future.

Nanda is a home-based producer.
Visit her Online Shop at Thulo.com/uu